Iraq fights back, but Iran should stay out
US officials have warned that Iran-backed militias will push the country deeper into the abyss.
Published: Wed 23 Dec 2015, 5:15 PM
Iraqi troops are showing some spunk and a will to fight after months of becoming cannon fodder for Daesh. They are advancing into Ramadi, a town held by the terror group, but there are concerns that Iranian troops are assisting in the assault, which could only exacerbate sectarian tensions in the area. Iraq is a communal tinderbox that terror outfits has exploited to their advantage, and any perceived Iranian role will only add fuel to the fire.
US officials have warned that Iran-backed militias will push the country deeper into the abyss. It's one thing to bring security to the country, but peace and reconciliation will be a difficult task if sectarian tensions and suspicions persist among the population.
What the Iraq army and government lack is a coherent policy that takes every group along in the campaign against extremist groups in the country. It is distrusted by large segments of the population for its appeasement of one group or the other. The slide began when the US disbanded a standing army, once the fourth largest in the world, after the fall of the Saddam Hussein. Communal elements had a field day during the US-led invasion. They formed militant groups and took over areas as the writ of the state grew weaker by the day.
Successive troop surges made the population believe that the West were occupiers, not liberators that they portrayed themselves to be. Now that Western coalition forces are in drawdown, the Iranian influence can be seen in the fightback against groups like Daesh that have filled the breach caused by the withering away of Al Qaeda.
Kurdish peshmerga fighters are the sole, stable influence in a divided Iraq. They have stayed true to their ideals and their military goals and were responsible for taking back Sinjar from Daesh. The Iraq army, on the other hand, is still a rag-a-tag bunch, who don't know what they're fighting for - a united Iraq, or for a political ideology aligned to Iran.