LONDON: On March 26, representatives of the US and Iraqi governments gathered in Irbil for the first meeting of the new US-Iraq High Joint Coordination Committee, set up at Washington’s urging in a bid to keep Iraq out of the current conflict in the region.
The following day, the US Embassy in Baghdad put out a statement declaring that the two sides had “decided to intensify cooperation to prevent terrorist attacks and ensure that Iraqi territory is not used as a launching point for any aggression,” against the Iraqi people, Iraqi security forces, US personnel “or neighboring and regional states.”
For those familiar with the complexities of Iraq’s security landscape and its many political alliances and loyalties, the statement sounded overly optimistic.
Members of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces during military exercise. (Reuters/File)
The reality was better framed by two events that unfolded within a couple of hours on March 14. The first was an airstrike on a house in Baghdad’s Karrada District, presumed, but not confirmed, to have been carried out by the US, in a failed attempt to kill Ahmad Al-Hamidawi, the leader of Kataib Hizballah, a prominent Iran-backed Iraqi militia.
There is a $10 million bounty on Al-Hamidawi’s head, issued by the US State Department’s Rewards for Justice Scheme. His group, it says, has for years “repeatedly targeted US personnel and facilities in Iraq with IEDs, rockets, and unmanned aircraft systems, kidnapped US citizens, and killed innocent Iraqi civilians.”
Shortly after the airstrike, which killed three members of Kataib Hizballah, the US Embassy in Baghdad was hit by a drone for the second time since the Iran war began in an apparent act of retaliation.
The embassy issued an alert urging US citizens to leave Iraq and not to come to the embassy or the consulate in Irbil.
The complexity of Iraqi politics is typified by the prolonged maneuvering over who will be the country’s next prime minister, a post that is supposed to be filled by the end of this week. The Coordination Framework, the largest bloc of Shiite parties, which controls over half of the seats in parliament, is still yet to agree on who should be its candidate.
Smoke billows from an oil warehouse in the Kani Qirzhala area on the outskirts of Irbil. (AFP/File)
Whoever leads Iraq will be faced with the same difficult task of balancing relations with Washington and Tehran that has dogged every Iraqi government since December 2005, when Iraqis voted for their country’s first full-term government and parliament since the US invasion in 2003.
But now, as outrage grows among Gulf Cooperation Council states, which have been on the receiving end of missile and drone attacks by pro-Iran militias in Iraq, the government in Baghdad is facing increasing pressure from its Arab neighbors to get its house in order.
Since the US-Israel war with Iran began on Feb. 28, the world has largely focused on the unprovoked rocket and drone attacks launched against the Gulf states by Iran.
What has often been overlooked beyond the region is the large number of attacks that have been launched against the Gulf states by pro-Iran groups within Iraq — a country with which the GCC states are fast losing patience.
On April 12, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry summoned Iraq’s ambassador to protest the drone attacks on the Kingdom and other Gulf states emanating from Iraqi territory, and to urge Baghdad to get a grip on the situation.
If it did not, Deputy Minister for Political Affairs Saud Al-Sati warned, Saudi Arabia “will take all necessary measures to defend its security and protect its territory.”
The following day, that message was repeated by Bahrain’s foreign ministry. Protesting the “continued malicious drone attacks” suffered by Bahrain and other Gulf states, it told Iraq’s charge d’affaires that it also reserved the right to take “all necessary measures” to protect itself.
People watch as smoke billows from an oil warehouse in the Kani Qirzhala area on the outskirts of Irbil. (AFP/File)
Two days later, on April 15, the UAE followed suit, handing Iraq’s charge d’affaires a “strongly worded note of protest,” condemning “the continuous unprovoked terrorist attacks launched from Iraqi territory, carried out by factions, militias, and armed terrorist groups affiliated with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The attacks posed “serious challenges to ... the fraternal ties between Iraq and GCC countries,” the note added, stressing “the importance of Iraq fulfilling its role in strengthening security and stability in the region.”
However, Iraqi politics is riddled with multiple parties and blocs that are allied to, or at best aligned with, pro-Iran militias, whose primary allegiance is with Tehran, not Baghdad.
Following Iraq’s parliamentary elections in November, the pro-Iran Coordination Framework emerged as the largest bloc in parliament. Overall, Shiite parties now hold 187 of the parliament’s 329 seats, with Sunnis trailing with just 77.
Members of Harakat Hezbollah Al-Nujaba in Baghdad, Iraq. (Reuters/File)
The reality of Iraq’s perilous situation was spelled out in an analysis published by the Atlantic Council on April 2.
Iran-backed militias, wrote Victoria J. Taylor, director of the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative, “are destroying Iraq.”
The strength of the militias, she added, “is in part the fault of successive Iraqi governments, which have allowed them to penetrate the security, political, and economic institutions of the state.”
Taylor, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran under the Biden and second Trump administrations, concluded that “the continued existence of the militias presents the greatest risk to Iraq itself.”
“Although Iraq’s recent prime ministers have made strides in repairing relations with Gulf and regional partners, the militia attacks on the Gulf and Jordan risk making Iraq a pariah state once again.”
The task before the Iraqi government was, she conceded, “perilous.”
Members of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) demonstrate their skills during a rehabilitation military exercise at a graduation ceremony in Basra, Iraq. (Reuters/File)
“Confronting the militias is akin to confronting an organization like the Sicilian mafia — groups so violent and with such deep penetration across multiple layers of society that Iraq’s legitimate security services, the judiciary, and even top leaders fear for their lives.”
Nevertheless, she added, “there is simply no other choice ... It’s time for Iraq to take back control of its country and its future.”
Increasingly, said David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and a former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, “Iraq resembles Lebanon” and is in danger of becoming a failed state.
In Iraq, “there is a huge amount of interference, money laundering, criminality and plain old influence by Iran,” he said.
“They’ve got a situation where the Hashd (the Popular Mobilization Forces, created to counter Daesh) is now institutionalized as part of the Iraqi Armed Forces.
“The real problem are the six or seven factions within the Hashd that are terrorist organizations that are on the government payroll, control the Hashd, are not answerable to the government and in fact are independent actors, oftentimes in the service of Iran.
Iraqi Kurdish men stand near their agricultural machinery damaged in a drone attack carried out by Iran-backed proxies, in the Kurdish village of Sebiran. (AFP/File)
“This is a third column and the central government claims to condemn their activities while at the same time it underwrites their salaries.”
It is, he says, “obviously a challenging situation for Iraq. As Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the former prime minister of Iraq, used to say, ‘the United States is our friend, but Iran is our neighbor.’”
But the Gulf states are also Iraq’s neighbors — and they are running out of patience.
“In recent years, the Gulf states have worked very hard to embrace Iraq, to emphasize Iraq’s Arabism and to try to drag it back into the Arab system,” Schenker said.
Smoke rises following a strike on the Bapco Oil Refinery on Sitra Island Bahrain. (Reuters/File)
“Potentially, Iraq stands to benefit greatly from this, with direct investment and other economic dividends.
“But because Baghdad is funding these organizations, which are part of the ruling coalition and sit in government, I think the frustration of the Gulf states now is going to be reflected in their policies, which will not seek to help Iraq to help itself.”
What Iraq needs now, he added, is “somebody who is an Iraqi nationalist, who seeks a prosperous, sovereign country. But that is something that can never happen while you have militias dominating.”
