Monday 19 August 2019 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 17FT BIG READ. IRAQ
Iraq is determined to stop itself being used as a proxy in the fight between its closest neighbour, Iran, and
one of its most important allies, the US. But can it avoid being dragged into yet another conflict?
By Chloe Cornish
emerging nationalism, invoked by high-
profile political figures, could help
weaken Iranian influence in Baghdad,
by replacing sectarian Sunni-Shia rheto-
ric and ethnic cleavages that have
undermined Iraqi unity and left it vul-
nerable to outside influence.
However, many Iraqis hope national-
ist feeling will strengthen the country
against all foreign meddlers — including
the widely unpopular US.
With Mr Ameri’s approval as head of
the Fatah parliamentary bloc, Shia par-
amilitaries have used their political
strength to push for the withdrawal of
US military advisers assisting Iraqi
forces hunting underground Isis cells.
New US sanctions against Iraqi officials
— imposed over corruption allegations
but widely interpreted as targeting fig-
ures with Iranian links — led to the US
being accused of interfering in Iraqi
affairs.
Mr Ameri now meets American offi-
cials, the pragmatic approach reflecting
his move into the mainstream. But he
remains a vociferous critic of Washing-
ton. Reflecting deep mistrust of what
many see as Mr Trump’s reckless anti-
Iran agenda, Mr Ameri says “the Iranian
side is 1,000 times more sane than the
American [one]”.Still fragile
In 2007 Iraq was the world’s second
most fragile state, according to the US-
based NGO Fund for Peace, which meas-
ures everything from social cohesion to
economic equality to assess countries’
vulnerabilities. Today it ranks 13th.
“Iraqis deserve far better,” says Mr
Salih. “But there is no denying the situa-
tion... is improving.” He wants to
focus on domestic problems — Iraq’s
fast-growing population needs 12,
new schools, for example — and making
Iraq a regional hub for “economic col-
laboration and integration” rather than
a proxy battleground for others.
Veteran Iraqi lawmakers who know
both sides well say they do not believe
either Tehran or Washington intends to
start a war. Yet “sometimes war doesn’t
happen by design”, says Hoshyar
Zebari, Iraq’s former foreign minister.
“But by mistake.”Fear of a regional confrontation
The Hashd al-Shaabi emerged in one of
Iraq’s darkest hours, after a fatwa by
Iraq’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali al-
Sistani urging volunteers to take up arms
against Isis. Although there are Hashd
units for all of Iraq’s faiths, the biggest
were Shia and supported by advisers
from the Quds Forces of Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard.
Many saw the Hashd as defenders of
the country, especially the Shia. Then
prime minister Haider al-Abadi made the
group an official part of Iraq’s security
forces. But since the territorial defeat of
Isis in 2017, the movement’s heroic status
has been tarnished by allegations of
extortion, smuggling and harassment of
citizens. The Hashd have become an
unwieldy institution, with political groups
and economic interests embedded in
Iraqi society. “Many Shia are worried
that under the guise of Hashd al-
Shabi a lot of corrupt,
undisciplined groups areHashd
al-Shaabi
How the
militias
became a
political
forceI
raq’s most powerful political and
military leaders were gathered in
Baghdad’s opulent presidential pal-
ace to discuss just one thing: how to
stop the country’s closest neigh-
bour, Iran, and its most powerful ally,
America, going to war on its soil.
The May 19 meeting took place when
US-Iran tensions over Tehran’s nuclear
programme and its backing of foreign
proxies had put the Middle East on edge.
Two weeks earlier, the US had dis-
patched an aircraft carrier strike group
to the Gulf, citing Iranian provocation.
In Iraq, which shares a 1,400km border
with Iran and majority Shia Muslim
populations, there was concern that it
could become the flashpoint. After all,
Iraq hosts more than 5,000 American
soldiers, while a plethora of local Shia
paramilitary groups are loyal t o Tehran.
Iraqi leaders could not face the pros-
pect of a new war after years of conflict
long predating the 2003 US invasion
that toppled Saddam Hussein. The oil-
rich country was just getting its breath
back after a four-year military cam-
paign to defeat Isis, supported by both
the US and Iran.
“[Iraq] is a success that is emerging
after four decades of conflict,” says Pres-
ident Barham Salih. “We don’t have the
stamina, we don’t have the energy, we
don’t have the resources, or the willing-
ness, to become victim to yet another
proxy conflict.”A fresh outbreak of violence, warns
Mr Salih, would shatter the country’s
hopes of rebuilding its society. Its neigh-
bours and allies “should not be allowed
to undermine the hard-won success in
Iraq”, he says. “We say Iraq first — and
we do not want our stability to be squan-
dered. We have had enough of conflicts.”
Some observers worry that the battle-
hardened Iraqi Shia paramilitaries who
have received training, arms and fund-
ing from Iran could provide the spark
for any conflict. So powerful are some of
these groups that their leaders were at
the palace meeting. Their rise has been
compared with Hizbollah, another Iran-
backed militia, which has become the
most potent force in Lebanon.
Washington considered the threat, to
US personnel and installations inside
Iraq, so severe that it closed its consulate
in Basra months earlier and days before
the meeting ordered non-essential dip-
lomatic staff to leave Baghdad.
The two sides have history. Iraqi Shia
militants fought American soldiers after
the US-led invasion. But in 2014, with
Iraq’s regular army collapsing as Isis
took control of a third of the country,
the Iran-linked paramilitaries mobi-
lised under the umbrella of the Popular
Mobilisation Units, or Hashd al-Shaabi.
Alongside volunteers answering a
religious call to take up arms against
Isis, they numbered some 100,000.
Their role in defeating the jihadi group
meant that in 2016, Hashd fighters were
given legal status and the group gained
serious political clout in last year’s elec-
tions. People regarded by American dip-
lomats as terrorists in the mid-2000s
were voted into parliament.
The Hashd are lauded by many as
having stopped Isis reaching Baghdad.
But since 2018, their swelling political
and economic power has been seen as a
challenge to the weak Iraqi state. Mike
Pompeo, US secretary of state, said last
year that Iran-backed Shia militias
“jeopardise Iraq’s sovereignty”.
Many leaders at the Baghdad meeting
privately favoured Tehran or Washing-
ton. A senior official says Iraq’s neutral-
ity in the US-Iran melee has frustrated
some in Tehran; nonetheless, that
stance was reaffirmed at the meeting.
Hours later, a Katyusha rocket hit the
central Baghdad Green Zone, home to
the sprawling US embassy. Analysts had
already warned that Iran could hit back
at the US by having regional proxies
conduct asymmetrical attacks.
It was one in a series of unclaimed
attacks close to American targets in
Iraq during May and June. They
coincided with incidents of sabo-
tage on tankers and oil infrastruc-
ture in the Gulf. Mr Pompeo linked
the incidents to Iran, which
dismissed the allegations.
No group claimed the
apparently unsophisti-
cated attacks in Iraq,
which caused no
casualties.terror organisation by the US, KH was
formed in 2007 to fight US forces in Iraq.
But it comes under the Hashd umbrella
and is closely linked with Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps.
But the Iraqi official questions the US
assessment: “According to our informa-
tion, the Iranians gave direct orders to
these groups not to [attack].”
The incident has left diplomats
worrying that rogue groups — without
any direct Iranian involvement — could
trigger a broader conflagration. Douglas
Silliman, US ambassador to Iraq until
January, told the Lawfare podcast last
month he fears “some group, probably
one that is not directly under the control
of Iran”, might cause casualties in an
attempt “to make a name for them-
selves for pushing the Americans out”.
Tensions across the Gulf during spring
and early summer peaked with Iranian
guns shooting down a US drone over
international waters — Tehran insists
the drone was over its waters. Just 10
minutes before US jets were set to hit
three different targets in a retaliatory
strike, Mr Trump “stopped it”, as he
later said on Twitter.Iraqi fears over being sucked into a
proxy war were not eased when Mr
Trump boasted, months before the
aborted attack, that America could use
military bases in Iraq to spy on Iran.
“The dilemma for Iraq is that the US is
an important ally,” says Mr Salih, choos-
ing his words carefully. “Iran is an
important neighbour.”Distrust of the US
Iran and Iraq’s shared history — etched
with grievances from Saddam’s regime
and eight years of war between 1980 and
1988 — is now animated by trade, and
social and religious ties: millions of Shia
pilgrims traverse the two countries
every year.
The toppling of Saddam, opened the
way for Tehran to expand its regional
influence. Since 2003, Baghdad’s politi-
cal class has been dominated by Shia
former opposition figures. Exiled from
Saddam’s regime, many sheltered
among fellow Shia Muslims in Iran,
where their militant groups and parties
were incubated. About half of Iraq’s par-
liamentary seats are now held by politi-
cians linked to Shia militias.
Hawkish US policymakers believe
that through its sway over the govern-
ment and its proxy militias, Iran has
made Iraq a vassal state.
Nouri al-Maliki, who was Iraqi prime
minister for eight years, denies that
Baghdad slavishly follows an Iranian
agenda. “I shook hands with Americans
and made deals with them,” he says. “At
the same time, I made use of Iran.”
But so strong is Tehran’s position, and
so unpopular is America, that should
the US increase pressure and force
Baghdad to choose, Iraqi officials warn
even moderates would cleave to Iran.
“Their policy of blacklists, sanctions,
siege and war threats will only earn the
US more enemies,” says Mr Maliki, who
was forced out of office in 2014 by the
Obama administration.
To some, Hadi al-Ameri, who heads
the Badr Organisation, the biggest of
Iraq’s longstanding Shia paramilitary
groups and a political party, appears the
sort of Iranian ally the Americans worry
about. He spent years in exile in Iran
before rising to head Badr, a group once
accused of running sectarian death
squads. And he defends Iran’s policies
and squarely blames US aggression for
the tensions.
He praises Iran for its help fighting
Isis, a view common in Baghdad, and
describes Qassem Soleimani, leader of
Iran’s elite overseas Quds Force of the
Revolutionary Guard — but the target of
US sanctions — as “our friend, not our
enemy”.
Yet, having traded fatigues for suits
and positioned himself as an Iraqi
nationalist amid an emerging “Iraq
First” sentiment, he is seen by diplo-
mats and analysts as an Iraqi militia
leader the US can talk to. US policymak-
ers are trying to calculate whether theundermining the viability of the
government,” says a senior Iraqi
official. Hashd-linked parties backed
the selection of technocrat prime
minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. But he has
no political base of his own. His office
is led by chief of staff Mohammad al-
Hashemi, who several analysts and
officials refer to as “the real prime
minister” and “Tehran’s man”.
Mr Abdul Mahdi last month issued a
decree bringing the 150,000 Hashd
fighters on to the state payroll, closing
their economic offices and stripping
the paramilitaries of their old insignias
and independence. The move was
praised by Shia militia leaders. But
some believe the government is too
weak to subjugate the Hashd. The
longstanding Shia paramilitary groups
“don’t want to be part of the state”,
says Hisham al-Hashemi, a
government counter-terrorism adviser.
“They want to be the state”.BAHRAINCaspian
SeaThe
GulfIRAQ
JORDANKUWAITSAUDI
ARABIASYRIAIRANQATARTURKEYTehranBaghdadBaghdadBaghdad kmKurdistan RegionalKurdistan RegionalKurdistan RegionalKurdistan RegionalKurdistan RegionalKurdistan RegionalKurdistan Regional
Government regionGovernment regionGovernment regionGovernment regionGovernment regionGovernment regionGovernment regionGovernment region“It was a way to test the limits of the
Americans,” says Maria Fantappie,
International Crisis Group’s senior Iraq
adviser. “Whoever did it is aware that
the red line for the Trump administra-
tion is bloodshed.”Highalert
US anxiety had been evident a fortnight
before the presidential palace meeting
when Mr Pompeo abruptly cancelled a
meeting with German chancellor
Angela Merkel in Berlin to make a late
night dash to Baghdad, where he
restated US concerns about Iraqi armed
groups under Iranian command.
The administration of US president
Donald Trump did not publicly specify
which groups it feared. And many argue
Washington, where anti-Iran hawks are
in the ascendancy, overreacted by evac-
uating the non-essential staff.
American intelligence “has a bias it
wants to prove”, says Hisham al-
Hashemi, an Iraqi government counter-
terrorism adviser. Yet one veteran Iraqi
politician describes “nasty threats” by
certain Shia militias against “US instal-
lations”, including oil companies and
diplomatic outposts. US intelligence, he
says, indicated Iranian military com-
manders had met their Iraqi paramili-
tary allies in Baghdad.
Stoking fears that rogue militant ele-
ments could push Iraq into confronta-
tion with its neighbours, a drone strike
on Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu pipeline, ini-
tially claimed by Iran-backed Yemeni
Houthis, was later blamed by Washing-
ton on Iraqi Shia militants.
But not all the militias which make up
the Hashd are seen as a threat. “The
Americans are blaming Kata’ib Hizbol-
lah,” says a senior Iraqi official. Kata’ib
Hizbollah is an Iran-backed Iraqi Shia
paramilitary group estimated to be
about 10,000-strong. Designated as aHashd al-Shaabi
fighters during a
2017 offensive to
drive out Isis
militants from
Hawija in
northern Iraq.
Below: president
Barham Salih.
Left: US troops
in the region
Martyn Aim/Corbis via GettyInstability fearsThe US fears that
Iran-backed Shia paramilitaries could
provide the spark for any conflict in IraqMainstream roleAfter the defeat of
Isis, the Hashd al-Shaabi gained
political clout in last year’s electionsRegional angleOfficials warn that if the
US increases pressure on Baghdad,
even moderates would cleave to Iran‘We don’t
have the
stamina, we
don’t have
the energy... or the
willingness
to become
victim to yet
another proxy
conflict’
Barham Salih‘[The Green
Zone attack]
was a way to
test the limits
of the
Americans.
Whoever did
it is aware that
the red line for
the Trump
administration
is bloodshed’Maria FantappieAUGUST 19 2019 Section:Features Time: 18/8/2019 - 17: 49 User: nicola.davison Page Name: BIGPAGE, Part,Page,Edition: USA, 17, 1
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