More than two years after the U.S. withdrawal and nearly a decade after the U.S. forces ousted Al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) from Fallujahh, Iraq is still grappling with an escalating sectarian crisis between the Shia-led government, but also an increasingly disaffected Sunni minority. Even more menacingly, however, AQI has relabelled itself as the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIS) and has taken over of parts of Ramadi and Fallujah in the notoriously rebellious Sunni-dominated Anbar province. While the Iraqi army managed to regain parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, it has so far failed to make any headway in Fallujahh.
Although Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has repeatedly warned that the army was on the verge of storming Fallujahh, he has so far refrained, fearing that civilian casualties would trigger a fierce backlash by tribal leaders backing the army. Maliki, asserted on February 5th that the only way to avoid a full-scale assault was accepting an amnesty declared on February 9th by Anbar’s Governor, Ahmed al Dulaimi. This amnesty offered militants one week to lay down their weapons. But despite the end of the deadline, military action has not yet materialized.
It is doubtless that 2013 witnessed a dramatic surge in deadly violence, yet it is nowhere near the 2006-2007 levels. This is largely due to the fact that despite a relentless campaign overwhelmingly targeting the Shia majority aimed at provoking tit-for-tat retaliatory attacks by the Shia militias, it has, at least for now, spectacularly failed. In retaliation for the killing of dozens of soldiers on December 21st, and in preparation for the looming general elections in April, the army bombed AQI camps, and arrested Ahmed al-Alwani, a Sunni MP who was wanted for terrorism charges. A week later, on December 30th, the army dismantled the protest camp in Ramadi.
While AQI and Sunni tribal leaders opened fire on the Army, the speaker of the parliament Osama al-Nujaifi and his Sunni bloc Mutahidoon, part of the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya bloc, explicitly demanded the immediate withdrawal of the army from Fallujahh and Ramadi. But as Maliki withdrew the army, AQI scrambled to seize the two cities. Without doubt, Maliki’s decision was, militarily speaking, a grave mistake. However, it has manifested that AQI had not only a highly significant presence in the protest camp, but even more alarmingly, it was heavily armed. Furthermore, the local police in Anbar were at best utterly incompetent, but at worst colluding with AQI.
Additionally, Maliki’s decision has driven a major wedge between Sunni tribal leaders. While Ahmed Abu Reasha has emphatically backed the army, Ali Hatem Suliaman has formed the Fallujahh Military Council to fight the Iraqi Army. Second, the sight of AQI sweeping into Fallujah and Ramadi, both scenes of the United States' fiercest battles, has undeniably jolted the Obama administration to sharply expedite shipments of desperately needed weapons.
Ever since the overthrow of Saddam’s regime in 2003, the Saudi regime has conspicuously been emphatically hostile towards Iraq. This has been largely due to its deeply entrenched fear that the success of democracy in Iraq would undoubtedly inspire its own people, but it has also been due to the deeply rooted hatred by Saudi Arabia’s extremist Wahhabi Salafi religious establishment towards the Shia. The Saudi regime also accuses Maliki of giving Iran a free hand to dramatically intensify its influence in Iraq. The Saudi regime has made no secret that its overriding priority is to severely undermine what it perceives as highly perilous and growing Iranian influence.
Even though the Saudi regime vehemently opposed U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, nevertheless in December 2011, Syria rather than Iraq became Saudi Arabia’s principal target for regime change. The Saudi regime has consistently considered the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad as an irreplaceable strategic ally to its primary foe, Iran. The Saudis moved swiftly to shore up the armed insurgents by deploying its intelligence services, whose instrumental role in establishing Jabhat al Nusra (JN) was highlighted in an intelligence review released in Paris in January 2013. The Saudi regime also used its influence and leverage on not only Sunni tribal leaders in western Iraq, but also on Saudi members of AQI, convincing it that its principal battlefield must be Syria and that its ultimate goal should be deposing Bashar al Assad’s Alawite regime, since its overthrow would break the back-bone of the Iraqi Shia-led government and inevitably loosen Iran’s grip on Iraq.
The New York Times reported on October 14, 2012, that most of the weapons shipped by Saudi Arabia and Qatar were going to hard-line jihadists in Syria, thereby explaining how JN swiftly rose to prominence in Syria. The New York Times also reported on September 12, 2013 that the Saudi regime dramatically stepped up its arming of the rebels, hoping to enable them to capitalise on much-anticipated U.S. military strikes in retaliation to a chemical attack on a Damascus suburb. However, the Saudi regime was deeply rattled by Obama’s change of heart. Not only did the administration pull back from launching military strikes against Syria, but, far more devastatingly, they actively pursued diplomacy to resolve Iran’s highly contentious nuclear programme. In response, on October 23, 2013, Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan reportedly told EU diplomats that Saudi Arabia is hell bent on scaling back its co-operation with the U.S. on the all-important issue of arming Syrian rebels.
Among the primary reasons for the strikingly extraordinary resurgence of AQI are the following: First, the torrent of funding, arming, logistical support, and salaries provided by Saudi Arabia to extremist groups in Syria have not only turned JN—which according to head of AQI Abu Baker al Baghdadi’s declaration in April 2013 is merely an extension of AQI and all the resources were shared between AQI and JN—but also Salafi Wahhabi groups into the most potent killing machine in Syria. This resulted in dramatically reviving AQI’s power and influence to levels that surmounts its peak strength in 2006-2007.
Second, the appointment of Bandar bin Sultan as the new Saudi intelligence chief in July 2012 was primarily designed to ratchet up Saudi Arabia’s faltering efforts in Syria. In Sultan’s eyes, overthrowing the Syrian regime was highly unachievable without initially destabilizing Iraq and Lebanon. Thus, AQI was given the green light to restart its intense campaign in Iraq, aimed at ensuring that Iraq would be far too busy to prop up the Syrian regime.
Third, the protests, which erupted in Anbar in December 2012, were swiftly highjacked by a number of Iraqiya bloc leaders and hard-line Sunni clerics. They not only defiantly refused to negotiate directly or indirectly with the central government, but sought to escalate the protests, which were spurred on by AQI and Saudi Arabia. For AQI, the ongoing protests were a golden opportunity for more radicalisation, recruitment, and ultimately reactivating the safe havens that originally existed in those areas. Saudi Arabia, in turn, enthusiastically trumpeted these protests as incontrovertible evidence that Iraq was adopting discriminatory policies, and exploited the protests to intensify its blatant meddling under the pretext of responding to appeals made by Sunni leaders. The Saudi Foreign minister in chillingly warned in January 2013 that Iraq will not stabilise unless it ceases embracing sectarian extremism.
Fourth, as part of the Saudi regime’s strenuous attempts to stave off an internal uprising, especially as its image as the guardian of Sunni Islam has unravelled (largely due to the Saudi regime’s support to the tyrannical regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen against the Sunnis in these countries), it has been working tirelessly to ratchet up sectarian strife in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. This paves the way for AQI to ignite a regional sectarian war, enabling it to demonstrate to its increasingly disenfranchised people that it is heavily engaged in combating an existential threat from the Shia, namely Iran.
Finally, fifth, the spiraling conflict in Syria has dramatically emboldened the Sunni minority in Iraq. All of these factors underscore the inescapable reality that Saudi Arabia’s virulently sectarian geo-policies are behind the resurgence of AQI.
According to the narratives of Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, it was Maliki’s policy of discriminating against the Sunni minority that revived AQI. This narrative holds no water, for it deliberately ignores the following facts. First, AQI was also heavily active in the same Sunni safe havens during the premiership of both Ayad Allawi—a secular Shia—and then Ibrahim al Jaffari. Second, the Sunni minority has persistently been in power since 1920, but during the Baathist era, and specifically under Saddam’s rule, it was almost exclusively calling the shots in Iraq. No wonder that the Sunnis regard the prominent positions of Vice President, Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister, and seven other ministries as woefully inadequate. Third, Sunni leaders have adamantly refused to accept the unavoidable reality that the Shia are the indisputable majority in Iraq. Nujaifi has even claimed on Al Jazeera TV in Qatar that the Sunnis are the majority. Fourth, despite Sunni claims that Article 4 of the terrorism law has unfairly been targeting them, it was actually the Shia cities of Basra, Amarah, and Sadr City which experienced the strictest implementation of anti-terror laws in 2008.
This narrative sends out the highly perilous message to all ethnic and religious minorities: It is perfectly justifiable for marginalized minorities to join terrorist groups like AQI and turn their areas into a safe heaven for suicide bombers to indiscriminately slaughter thousands of innocent civilians to bring the government to its knees. That was indeed Al Qaida’s narrative for attacking New York, London, Madrid and, now, Baghdad.
Zayd Alisa is a political analyst and commentator on Middle East Affairs. A human rights activist for twenty five years, he has actively promoted democracy and freedom of expression in Iraq and the Arab world.
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Saudi Arabia’s Sectarian Policies Behind Resurgence of Al Qaida in Iraq
May 1, 2014
More than two years after the U.S. withdrawal and nearly a decade after the U.S. forces ousted Al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) from Fallujahh, Iraq is still grappling with an escalating sectarian crisis between the Shia-led government, but also an increasingly disaffected Sunni minority. Even more menacingly, however, AQI has relabelled itself as the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIS) and has taken over of parts of Ramadi and Fallujah in the notoriously rebellious Sunni-dominated Anbar province. While the Iraqi army managed to regain parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, it has so far failed to make any headway in Fallujahh.
Although Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has repeatedly warned that the army was on the verge of storming Fallujahh, he has so far refrained, fearing that civilian casualties would trigger a fierce backlash by tribal leaders backing the army. Maliki, asserted on February 5th that the only way to avoid a full-scale assault was accepting an amnesty declared on February 9th by Anbar’s Governor, Ahmed al Dulaimi. This amnesty offered militants one week to lay down their weapons. But despite the end of the deadline, military action has not yet materialized.
It is doubtless that 2013 witnessed a dramatic surge in deadly violence, yet it is nowhere near the 2006-2007 levels. This is largely due to the fact that despite a relentless campaign overwhelmingly targeting the Shia majority aimed at provoking tit-for-tat retaliatory attacks by the Shia militias, it has, at least for now, spectacularly failed. In retaliation for the killing of dozens of soldiers on December 21st, and in preparation for the looming general elections in April, the army bombed AQI camps, and arrested Ahmed al-Alwani, a Sunni MP who was wanted for terrorism charges. A week later, on December 30th, the army dismantled the protest camp in Ramadi.
While AQI and Sunni tribal leaders opened fire on the Army, the speaker of the parliament Osama al-Nujaifi and his Sunni bloc Mutahidoon, part of the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya bloc, explicitly demanded the immediate withdrawal of the army from Fallujahh and Ramadi. But as Maliki withdrew the army, AQI scrambled to seize the two cities. Without doubt, Maliki’s decision was, militarily speaking, a grave mistake. However, it has manifested that AQI had not only a highly significant presence in the protest camp, but even more alarmingly, it was heavily armed. Furthermore, the local police in Anbar were at best utterly incompetent, but at worst colluding with AQI.
Additionally, Maliki’s decision has driven a major wedge between Sunni tribal leaders. While Ahmed Abu Reasha has emphatically backed the army, Ali Hatem Suliaman has formed the Fallujahh Military Council to fight the Iraqi Army. Second, the sight of AQI sweeping into Fallujah and Ramadi, both scenes of the United States' fiercest battles, has undeniably jolted the Obama administration to sharply expedite shipments of desperately needed weapons.
Ever since the overthrow of Saddam’s regime in 2003, the Saudi regime has conspicuously been emphatically hostile towards Iraq. This has been largely due to its deeply entrenched fear that the success of democracy in Iraq would undoubtedly inspire its own people, but it has also been due to the deeply rooted hatred by Saudi Arabia’s extremist Wahhabi Salafi religious establishment towards the Shia. The Saudi regime also accuses Maliki of giving Iran a free hand to dramatically intensify its influence in Iraq. The Saudi regime has made no secret that its overriding priority is to severely undermine what it perceives as highly perilous and growing Iranian influence.
Even though the Saudi regime vehemently opposed U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, nevertheless in December 2011, Syria rather than Iraq became Saudi Arabia’s principal target for regime change. The Saudi regime has consistently considered the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad as an irreplaceable strategic ally to its primary foe, Iran. The Saudis moved swiftly to shore up the armed insurgents by deploying its intelligence services, whose instrumental role in establishing Jabhat al Nusra (JN) was highlighted in an intelligence review released in Paris in January 2013. The Saudi regime also used its influence and leverage on not only Sunni tribal leaders in western Iraq, but also on Saudi members of AQI, convincing it that its principal battlefield must be Syria and that its ultimate goal should be deposing Bashar al Assad’s Alawite regime, since its overthrow would break the back-bone of the Iraqi Shia-led government and inevitably loosen Iran’s grip on Iraq.
The New York Times reported on October 14, 2012, that most of the weapons shipped by Saudi Arabia and Qatar were going to hard-line jihadists in Syria, thereby explaining how JN swiftly rose to prominence in Syria. The New York Times also reported on September 12, 2013 that the Saudi regime dramatically stepped up its arming of the rebels, hoping to enable them to capitalise on much-anticipated U.S. military strikes in retaliation to a chemical attack on a Damascus suburb. However, the Saudi regime was deeply rattled by Obama’s change of heart. Not only did the administration pull back from launching military strikes against Syria, but, far more devastatingly, they actively pursued diplomacy to resolve Iran’s highly contentious nuclear programme. In response, on October 23, 2013, Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan reportedly told EU diplomats that Saudi Arabia is hell bent on scaling back its co-operation with the U.S. on the all-important issue of arming Syrian rebels.
Among the primary reasons for the strikingly extraordinary resurgence of AQI are the following: First, the torrent of funding, arming, logistical support, and salaries provided by Saudi Arabia to extremist groups in Syria have not only turned JN—which according to head of AQI Abu Baker al Baghdadi’s declaration in April 2013 is merely an extension of AQI and all the resources were shared between AQI and JN—but also Salafi Wahhabi groups into the most potent killing machine in Syria. This resulted in dramatically reviving AQI’s power and influence to levels that surmounts its peak strength in 2006-2007.
Second, the appointment of Bandar bin Sultan as the new Saudi intelligence chief in July 2012 was primarily designed to ratchet up Saudi Arabia’s faltering efforts in Syria. In Sultan’s eyes, overthrowing the Syrian regime was highly unachievable without initially destabilizing Iraq and Lebanon. Thus, AQI was given the green light to restart its intense campaign in Iraq, aimed at ensuring that Iraq would be far too busy to prop up the Syrian regime.
Third, the protests, which erupted in Anbar in December 2012, were swiftly highjacked by a number of Iraqiya bloc leaders and hard-line Sunni clerics. They not only defiantly refused to negotiate directly or indirectly with the central government, but sought to escalate the protests, which were spurred on by AQI and Saudi Arabia. For AQI, the ongoing protests were a golden opportunity for more radicalisation, recruitment, and ultimately reactivating the safe havens that originally existed in those areas. Saudi Arabia, in turn, enthusiastically trumpeted these protests as incontrovertible evidence that Iraq was adopting discriminatory policies, and exploited the protests to intensify its blatant meddling under the pretext of responding to appeals made by Sunni leaders. The Saudi Foreign minister in chillingly warned in January 2013 that Iraq will not stabilise unless it ceases embracing sectarian extremism.
Fourth, as part of the Saudi regime’s strenuous attempts to stave off an internal uprising, especially as its image as the guardian of Sunni Islam has unravelled (largely due to the Saudi regime’s support to the tyrannical regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen against the Sunnis in these countries), it has been working tirelessly to ratchet up sectarian strife in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. This paves the way for AQI to ignite a regional sectarian war, enabling it to demonstrate to its increasingly disenfranchised people that it is heavily engaged in combating an existential threat from the Shia, namely Iran.
Finally, fifth, the spiraling conflict in Syria has dramatically emboldened the Sunni minority in Iraq. All of these factors underscore the inescapable reality that Saudi Arabia’s virulently sectarian geo-policies are behind the resurgence of AQI.
According to the narratives of Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, it was Maliki’s policy of discriminating against the Sunni minority that revived AQI. This narrative holds no water, for it deliberately ignores the following facts. First, AQI was also heavily active in the same Sunni safe havens during the premiership of both Ayad Allawi—a secular Shia—and then Ibrahim al Jaffari. Second, the Sunni minority has persistently been in power since 1920, but during the Baathist era, and specifically under Saddam’s rule, it was almost exclusively calling the shots in Iraq. No wonder that the Sunnis regard the prominent positions of Vice President, Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister, and seven other ministries as woefully inadequate. Third, Sunni leaders have adamantly refused to accept the unavoidable reality that the Shia are the indisputable majority in Iraq. Nujaifi has even claimed on Al Jazeera TV in Qatar that the Sunnis are the majority. Fourth, despite Sunni claims that Article 4 of the terrorism law has unfairly been targeting them, it was actually the Shia cities of Basra, Amarah, and Sadr City which experienced the strictest implementation of anti-terror laws in 2008.
This narrative sends out the highly perilous message to all ethnic and religious minorities: It is perfectly justifiable for marginalized minorities to join terrorist groups like AQI and turn their areas into a safe heaven for suicide bombers to indiscriminately slaughter thousands of innocent civilians to bring the government to its knees. That was indeed Al Qaida’s narrative for attacking New York, London, Madrid and, now, Baghdad.
Zayd Alisa is a political analyst and commentator on Middle East Affairs. A human rights activist for twenty five years, he has actively promoted democracy and freedom of expression in Iraq and the Arab world.
