Fall of Ramadi Raises Questions About Obama’s Strategy to Defeat ISIS in Iraq
James Phillips / May 19, 2015
The seizure of the city of Ramadi by the Islamic State (or ISIS) on Sunday was a major setback for the Iraqi government and for the Obama administration.
Although U.S. officials downplayed the significance of the defeat, saying that Ramadi was not “strategic” in a military sense, Ramadi is a very important political symbol because it is the capital of Anbar province, the predominantly Sunni Arab western province that has been a stronghold for the Islamic State and its predecessor organizations, ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The panicked retreat of Iraqi police and security forces from Ramadi underscores the continued weakness of the Iraqi army and police. It also raises questions about the viability of the Obama administration’s strategy to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq.
The fact that the Baghdad government now is considering moving Shiite militias to Ramadi, a predominantly Sunni city, suggests that Iraq’s central government still lacks adequate support from Iraq’s Sunni Arabs to defeat the Islamic State, a Sunni revolutionary movement. This spells trouble for Iraqi and American plans to defeat the Islamic State.
Those plans included the building of an inclusive ruling coalition in Baghdad that would unite Iraq’s Shiite majority with the Kurdish and Sunni Arab minorities, who would contribute militia fighters to aid the Shiite-dominated Iraqi army.
Earlier this month, the first 1,000 Sunni recruits joined a pro-government Sunni tribal militia that is slated to grow to 6,000. But the arming of Sunni militias in Anbar province has been delayedby the opposition of Shiite political leaders who doubt the loyalty of many Sunni Iraqis in an increasingly polarized sectarian atmosphere.
The fall of Ramadi also has weakened Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who became Iraq’s top leader last year with strong backing from the United States.
Abadi, a Shiite political leader who promised to lead a more inclusive government, reached a deal on sharing oil revenues with Iraqi Kurds and pushed for arming Sunni tribesman to fight against the Islamic State. But Abadi’s plans to arm Sunni militias have been trimmed back by rival Shiite leaders backed by Iran, who favor the ruthless employment of Iranian-trained Shiite militias.
Now Iran’s preferred militias are building up in preparation to retake Ramadi. Their presence is likely to further exacerbate sectarian tensions which the Islamic State has exploited to gain support from Iraqi Sunnis fearful of Shiite domination.
A military victory for Iran’s surrogate militias in Ramadi would amount to a political defeat for the United States and for Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi. And such a victory could trigger a Sunni backlash that could boost the Islamic State and prolong, rather than shorten, Iraq’s civil war.
Iraq, mostly populated by Muslims, has was always been majority Shia muslim, like Iran. However Iraq under Saddam, a Sunni muslim dictator, was governed by its Sunni minority. Tikrit, birthplace of Saddam and long a Sunni minority stronghold, at one point recently fell to Sunni ISIS fighters. In the process of taking Tikrit back from ISIS, Shia Iraqi forces brutally purged it of Sunnis. So although Tikrit is now back in Iraqi government hands, its a wasteland. Almost no Sunni residents have returned after the governmental purge. Should the Iraqi government act to retake Ramallah, the same ultimate result is likely–a brutal purge of Sunni muslim residents. Is this what our _resident’s administration wanted all along? Iraqi Sunnis purged from Southern Iraq?
From generational dynamics daily weblog (generationaldynamics.com):
ISIS is now in control of 80% of Anbar Province, the heart of the minority Sunni population in Iraq.
The Iran-backed Shia government in Baghdad has ordered Iraq’s Iran-trained Shia militias, also called Hashid Shaabi or “popular mobilization units,” to deploy to Ramadi and recapture it from ISIS.
When Shia militias were deployed last year to recapture Tikrit from ISIS, they did so, but committed atrocities against the Sunni population, looting and destroying their homes. Some 400,000 people fled their homes, as I described, and Tikrit is now a ghost town.
Now the Shia militias are entering Ramadi, and Sunni militias in the region are not going to tolerate the same kinds of atrocities as happened in Tikrit.
I’ve heard several analysts on Monday predict or raise concerns about a major Sunni-Shia bloodbath as Ramadi is being recaptured.
Nothing like this will happen. There may be some clashes between Sunni and Shia militias, but a Sunni-Shia bloodbath is completely impossible.
Iraq’s last generational crisis war was the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s. Something like 1.5 million people were killed in that extremely bloody war, but it was not a war between Sunnis and Shias. During that war, the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq were united in fighting against the Persians in Iran. In other words, it was an ethnic war, Arabs versus Persians. (There was also a third ethnic group, the Kurds.)
So now Iraq is in a generational Awakening era, one generation past the Iran/Iraq war. There are millions of survivors of the Iran/Iraq war who remember its horrors and have no intention of letting anything like it happen again. In particular, with Sunni and Shia Arabs having fought shoulder-to-shoulder against the Persians, they have no intention now of having a bloodbath war with each other, just because their children are doing some looting and committing some atrocities. (For more information, see my lengthy 2007 analysis of the Iraq war:”Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq.”)
Even without resorting to generational theory, this argument is proven by the experience in Tikrit. When the Shia militias started committing atrocities in Tikrit, why did 400,000 Sunnis leave their homes and flee for their lives? Why didn’t they fight back against the Shia militias to save their homes? Why didn’t they start a full-scale Sunni-Shia bloodbath in Tikrit?
The answer is because the survivors of the Iran/Iraq war want nothing to do with those horrors again, so there was no Sunni-Shia bloodbath in Tikrit. And for the same reason, there will be no Sunni-Shia bloodbath in Ramadi.