Patrick Cockburn
SAUDI ARABIA has sent 30,000 soldiers to its 500-mile border with Iraq after claims that Iraqi soldiers had abandoned their positions along the frontier, though this is denied by Baghdad. The Saudi-backed al-Arabiya channel said it had obtained video footage in which an Iraqi officer said 2,500 troops had been ordered to pull back from the border. The Iraqi army still appears to be dissolving after its retreat from the northern half of the country when Mosul was captured by Isis in June.
A brief counter-offensive to retake Tikrit, north of Baghdad, on the day of the opening of parliament on July 1, failed to make any ground. Tikrit is without water and electricity and has been largely abandoned by its people.
Kurdish “peshmerga” troops transport wounded men after clashes with militants of the Isis in Jalawla, Diyala province. Reuters
Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region looks set to take advantage of the turmoil to declare an independent state. The region’s President, Massoud Barzani, asked the parliament to prepare to hold a referendum on independence, saying, “The time has come for us to determine our own fate”. In declaring the Islamic State and demanding that all Muslims pledge allegiance to it, Isis has challenged the legitimacy of all Muslim rulers – including those of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, who have fostered the opposition in Syria and been sympathetic to it in Iraq. Studies show that where Isis takes over a district it can often recruit five or 10 times the number of fighters it used to secure control. It is offering about £400 a month for recruits with military experience, and Iraq is full of jobless young men of military age.
Iraq is also facing a political crisis as it tries to form a new government after the parliamentary election in April. Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, did well in these by presenting himself to Shia voters as a man who was tough on security and who knew how to cope with a Sunni counter-revolution. Discredited by military defeat and loss of control of most of the country north and west of Baghdad, Maliki still clings to power. He is helped by the deep divisions within the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities, which have not been able to pick which of their leaders should be chosen as candidates. The speaker of parliament is normally a Sunni, the president a Kurd and the prime minister a Shia, but no decision on choosing them is likely within the next three or four weeks, say MPs. After the 2010 election it took 10 months to choose a new government.
Football fervour scores over Isis fear
Iraqi football fans are continuing to gather and watch the World Cup together, in defiance of Sunni militants and the dangers facing a country rapidly descending into all-out war. Fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) have taken over large areas of western and northern Iraq and their raids have come within an hour's drive of Baghdad — but this has not deterred many from going to local cafés to watch the matches. Mr Hussein said: “I remember in 2007 everyone was celebrating in the streets, and you wouldn’t know who was Sunni and who was Shia.” Isis launched its military campaign last month, capturing Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul and effectively dissolving the border with Syria, before declaring a new Islamic state.
One fan, Raad Abdulhussein, told AFP that he has been going to the capital's “Facebook Café” every day with his friends to watch the matches, even though there are clearly risks. Café owner Ali Hussein said that “a lot of clients” visit his establishment to watch the tournament, particularly for important matches, and that he regularly caters to a full house. Although Iraq did not qualify for this year’s tournament in Brazil, the national team has had previous successes. In 2007, they won the AFC Asian Cup and the 2009 UAE International Cup. —AP
Isis crisis
* The Isis announced recently that it has unilaterally established a caliphate in the areas under its control. It declared the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of its new self-styled state governed by sharia law, and demanded that all Muslims pledge allegiance to him.
* Isis now controls land stretching from northern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad. That has sent tremors across the region, particularly in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iran
* Talks on forming a national government will continue inside the heavily defended Green Zone. Tribal and Sunni militants who are not part of Isis are less likely to be able to oppose the jihadis or split from them.
* The US-backed Sahwah movement had divided the Sunni insurgency in 2006-07.
— The Independent
No comments:
Post a Comment