Why Does Baghdad Let ISIS Keep Winning?

Daily Beast: Iran interference in Iraq behind ISIS takeover of Ramadi — “Sectarian politics kept govt from defending it”

By Omri Ceren, TIP

The day is going to be driven by the fall of Ramadi in Iraq to ISIS. As always there are political and policy angles.

On the political side, the White House is already battling accusations that it withdrew from Iraq precipitously, leaving a vacuum to be filled either by Iran or ISIS. Relatedly, the State Department may be asked to explain how U.S. allies in the region can trust Washington’s security assurances when the U.S. military left under those conditions. The Defense Department is on the hook for assessing as late as Wednesday that ISIS was on the defensive. Those may show up in afternoon press conferences.

On the policy side, there’s the simple question of what to do.  Iran-aligned forces inside Iraq are amassing near Ramadi right now, but a Shiite-led campaign may end up backfiring even if it is militarily successful. The ISIS phenomenon in Iraq is in large part a function of Iranian hegemony over the country in the first place: it was at Iran’s behest that Iraqi governments excluded and disempowered Sunnis in recent years, generating a kind of one-two punch: Sunnis who wanted to fight ISIS couldn’t do so, because Baghdad denied them weapons out of sectarian animus, while other Sunnis looked at the sectarian reality being imposed, and stood aside as ISIS established a foothold inside Iraq. Some went so far as to take up arms for ISIS as a counterweight to Shiite expansionism.

The same problem is playing out on the ground in Ramadi. Again at Iran’s behest, Baghdad has been unwilling to let local Sunnis have access to what they need – especially weapons, but not only weapons – to defend the city and the region from ISIS. The result is the same as it has been elsewhere: some Sunnis have become unable to fight while others don’t see the point.The Daily Beast has a piece this morning, double-bylined by the Beast’s Jacob Siegel and the National Defense University’s Michael Pregent, on exactly that dynamic. 

The Sunni force to retake Mosul has not been built yet. The force to take back Ramadi exists, but it needs weapons, ammo, and more important, Baghdad’s willingness to trust it enough not to disarm it afterward. It may also need Iran’s approval. The strategic goals of Baghdad are currently aligned with Iran’s: to secure infrastructure and negate Sunni threats along the Shia-sectarian fault lines in and around Baghdad, Diyala, and Salah-ad-Din… Multiple people in Anbar who once fought alongside the U.S. against an earlier incarnation of ISIS “haven’t been getting the weapons they need,” Jensen said… Baghdad has shown little interest in distinguishing between Sunnis who have actively collaborated with ISIS or are otherwise irreconcilable and those have grievances against the government but are suffering under ISIS and desperate for the resources to fight it.

Now Iran-backed militias will try to retake Ramadi. If they succeed, the city may witness the kind of anti-Sunni ethnic cleansing that other areas of Iraq have suffered as Iran-backed forces swept through. If they fail, the new reality will be spun as Islamic State dominance in Anbar, which used to be a symbol of post-Saddam Iraqi nationalism. Either way, the result will likely reinforce ISIS’s brand as the only force that matters to Sunnis.