The fiercest war lies ahead

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Patrick Cockburn - The meltdown of American and British policy in Iraq and Syria attracts surprisingly little criticism at home. Their aim for the past three years has been get rid of Bashar al-Assad as ruler of Syria and stabilise Iraq under the leadership of Nouri al-Maliki. The exact reverse has happened, with Mr Assad in power and likely to remain so, while Iraq is in turmoil with the government’s authority extending only a few miles north and west of Baghdad.

By pretending that the Syrian opposition stood a chance of overthrowing Mr Assad after the middle of 2012, and insisting that his departure be the justification for peace talks, Washington, London and Paris have ensured that the Syrian civil war would go on. “I spent three years telling them again and again that the war in Syria would inevitably destabilise Iraq, but they paid no attention,” the Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told me last week. I remember in the autumn of 2012 a senior British diplomat assuring me that talk of the Syrian war spreading was much exaggerated.

Now the bills are beginning to come in, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), declaring a caliphate in northern Iraq and Syria. He has called on all Muslims to pledge allegiance to the Islamic state and effectively denied the legitimacy of Muslim rulers throughout the world. No wonder Saudi Arabia has moved 30,000 troops to guard its 500-mile-long border with Iraq. There is a certain divine justice in this, since until six months ago the Saudis were speeding jihadists in the general direction of Syria and Iraq but is now dreading their return.

The success of Isis depends on its ability to win spectacular victories against the odds and not on its primeval and brutal ideology. Victory in battle is what makes it attractive to young Sunni recruits and it can also afford to pay them. It cannot sit on its laurels for long but needs to secure the territories it has taken and make sure that its Sunni allies - tribal, Baathist, former members of Saddam’s army - who joined it to fight against Mr Maliki will not find the new masters worse than the old and change sides. Isis has moved swiftly to prevent this by demanding that the allies swear allegiance to the caliphate and give up their weapons. But beyond that Isis must show that success at Mosul was not a flash in the pan. As Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi put it last week: “There is no deed better than jihad, so to arms, to arms, soldiers of the Islamic state, fight, fight.”

http://www.nation.com.pk/international/08-Jul-2014/the-fiercest-war-lies-ahead

[Jefferson23]

1. Horrendous...it's just too awful for words. n/t

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2. Yeah. We are governed by idiots. And I agree with most of his analysis.

This is going to be very old school.

[Jefferson23]

3. How else can you call it but dumb..scary idiots. n/t

[haele]

4. The scorpion always makes obvious what it intends to do.

To partner with a scorpion because it will destroy one's enemies also means one will get fatally stung when steping in to pick up the enemy left behind.

You can't control crazy.
And one would think that supposedly politically astute, educated, experiance people with power would understand that.

In all history, there has never been a successful outcome when an established sectarian power base decides to give free reign to a radical charismatic to lead armies of leftover, futureless young men against their political or religious enemies. True believers pretty much always win. After all, they have nothing to lose, and anything is better than where they came from.

Haele

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5. And everybody keeps pumping in arms. nt

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6. Sunni Tribes to Fight Until Iraq’s Maliki Goes, Chief Says

Sunni tribes battling the Shiite-led government of Iraq won’t stop until Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki steps down, a clan chief said. Then they want to set up their own autonomous region within a united Iraq.

“There is no way back,” Najih al-Mizan, a leader from the Albu-Rahman tribe in the northern city of Samarra in Salahuddin province, said by phone. “We’re going to form our own federal territory based on the Iraqi constitution.”

The al-Qaeda breakaway group that last month escalated its offensive against the state has been joined by some clans who accuse Maliki of excluding Sunnis from government. The premier, whose party won the most parliamentary seats in April’s election, has defied calls from across the sectarian divide for him to step down, while rivals have been unable to garner enough support to force him from office. Parliament, which had been due to sit today, is now set to meet on July 13.

The tribesmen aren’t fighting for the caliphate that the Islamic State fighters have proclaimed in territory they control, and will deal with the militant threat once their demands are met, al-Mizan said. In addition to removing Maliki, they’re seeking an emergency government of technocrats, the disbanding of Shiite militias, and the restoration of an independent judiciary, he said.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-07-07/sunni-tribes-to-fight-on-until-iraq-s-maliki-goes-leader-says