Loveday Morris
By Loveday Morris
Watban Al Jabbouri is the kind of man that the Iraqi and US governments are depending on to turn the tide against the Islamic State fighters who have seized a huge swath of territory in this country.
For three months, the 33-year-old Sunni tribesman fought bitterly to keep the Islamic State out of his town, until an explosives-packed Humvee rammed his front-line position and sent him to the hospital bed where he now lies.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi wants to use fighters such as Jabbouri to fill new national guard units intended to protect their home provinces. President Barack Obama announced US support for the project in his speech Wednesday on countering the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State. But even Jabbouri is uncertain whether the plan can work.
“We’ve begged other tribes in our areas to join, but they either sit aside and do nothing or they are with them,” he said, referring to the Islamic State.
While details on the new national guard are being finalised, current discussions centre on creating Sunni and Shia units to serve in their respective areas of influence.
But the Shia-led government faces huge challenges in winning support from the Sunni community and in subjugating Shia militias that are leading the fight against the Islamic State, experts say.
Meanwhile, Kurds have flatly rejected suggestions that the peshmerga forces in their semiautonomous northern region be incorporated into the enterprise.
Jabbouri doesn’t oppose the plan to build a national guard force. Anything that might bring salaries or ammunition to his tribesmen is worth trying, he said. The militants they are fighting are battle-hardened and better trained and equipped — to the extent that they sacrificed two Humvees in the suicide bombing that injured him this month in his home town of Dhuluiya, 45 miles north of Baghdad.
Jabbouri’s tribe, however, is not necessarily typical. When Islamic State militants swept into northern and western Iraq this year, some Sunni tribes welcomed them or quietly capitulated. Many Sunnis had angrily complained of discrimination under former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki, a Shia.
In Arab Jubour, once a Sunni insurgent haven just south of Baghdad, Sheikh Mustafa Al Shabib says he has rejected approaches by Iraqi officials for him to help coordinate the new national guard. For him, it bears too much resemblance to the Awakening Movement, or Sahwa, a programme started by the United States in 2006 to use Sunni tribesmen to crush Al Qaeda. The US military regarded the programme as critical in defeating the Sunni insurgency at the time.
However, the project had an acrimonious end after it was transferred to the Iraqi government, which did not pay salaries or keep promises to incorporate the Sunni fighters into the regular security forces.
“Back in 2005, the Americans were too afraid to come here. It was a city of death,” Shabib said. “We cleared out
Al Qaeda, we brought back life, and what thanks did we receive from the government? None.”
Shabib said that when the Awakening forces were disbanded, he was offered a job in the army as a regular soldier, which he said was an insult after he served as a general under Saddam Hussein and later led 3,000 tribal fighters.
In 2009 he was arrested under terrorism laws that Sunnis complain are used to target their community.
“They betrayed the Awakening project, and therefore they will pay the price,” Shabib said.
The new prime minister is making efforts to build bridges, and on Saturday he announced that he had ordered the Iraqi air force to end the bombardment of residential areas, even in Sunni-dominated towns controlled by the Islamic State. The indiscriminate airstrikes — often using inaccurate barrel bombs — had fuelled anger against the state.
Incorporating the Shia militias into the national guard is also likely to be challenging, said Raoul Alcala, a former US adviser to Iraq’s National Security Council.
“I don’t think it’s possible or feasible,” he said. “The militias have never wanted to be controlled by anybody except for their designated leaders. I’d be very surprised if the model would work, but it’s a noble effort.”
A Defence Ministry spokesman did not respond to calls for comment on the strategy.
Kataib Hezbollah, a Shia militia designated a terrorist organisation by the United States, has more than tripled in size over the past three months and has more than 30,000 fighters on active duty, said Sheikh Jassim Al Saidi, Imam of one of the organisation’s Baghdad mosques. Now the place of worship more resembles a military base as buses of militiamen are ferried in and out between the mosque and the front lines.
“If the government orders us to use our weapons under the control of the state, we will do it,” he said. “But it’s not time for this question yet, and when it is, we will have conditions. We protected the capital, we protected the government, the government can’t stand against the Islamic resistance,” he said, referring to the Shia militias.
Hamid Al Mutlaq, a Sunni member of the parliament’s defence and security committee, said that if the Shia militias were brought onboard, the national guard organisation would simply become a cloak for militia activity.
“What we need to do instead is retrain and rebuild so people feel the army represents them and the police represent them,” he said.
WP-BLOOMBERG
By Loveday Morris
Watban Al Jabbouri is the kind of man that the Iraqi and US governments are depending on to turn the tide against the Islamic State fighters who have seized a huge swath of territory in this country.
For three months, the 33-year-old Sunni tribesman fought bitterly to keep the Islamic State out of his town, until an explosives-packed Humvee rammed his front-line position and sent him to the hospital bed where he now lies.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi wants to use fighters such as Jabbouri to fill new national guard units intended to protect their home provinces. President Barack Obama announced US support for the project in his speech Wednesday on countering the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State. But even Jabbouri is uncertain whether the plan can work.
“We’ve begged other tribes in our areas to join, but they either sit aside and do nothing or they are with them,” he said, referring to the Islamic State.
While details on the new national guard are being finalised, current discussions centre on creating Sunni and Shia units to serve in their respective areas of influence.
But the Shia-led government faces huge challenges in winning support from the Sunni community and in subjugating Shia militias that are leading the fight against the Islamic State, experts say.
Meanwhile, Kurds have flatly rejected suggestions that the peshmerga forces in their semiautonomous northern region be incorporated into the enterprise.
Jabbouri doesn’t oppose the plan to build a national guard force. Anything that might bring salaries or ammunition to his tribesmen is worth trying, he said. The militants they are fighting are battle-hardened and better trained and equipped — to the extent that they sacrificed two Humvees in the suicide bombing that injured him this month in his home town of Dhuluiya, 45 miles north of Baghdad.
Jabbouri’s tribe, however, is not necessarily typical. When Islamic State militants swept into northern and western Iraq this year, some Sunni tribes welcomed them or quietly capitulated. Many Sunnis had angrily complained of discrimination under former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki, a Shia.
In Arab Jubour, once a Sunni insurgent haven just south of Baghdad, Sheikh Mustafa Al Shabib says he has rejected approaches by Iraqi officials for him to help coordinate the new national guard. For him, it bears too much resemblance to the Awakening Movement, or Sahwa, a programme started by the United States in 2006 to use Sunni tribesmen to crush Al Qaeda. The US military regarded the programme as critical in defeating the Sunni insurgency at the time.
However, the project had an acrimonious end after it was transferred to the Iraqi government, which did not pay salaries or keep promises to incorporate the Sunni fighters into the regular security forces.
“Back in 2005, the Americans were too afraid to come here. It was a city of death,” Shabib said. “We cleared out
Al Qaeda, we brought back life, and what thanks did we receive from the government? None.”
Shabib said that when the Awakening forces were disbanded, he was offered a job in the army as a regular soldier, which he said was an insult after he served as a general under Saddam Hussein and later led 3,000 tribal fighters.
In 2009 he was arrested under terrorism laws that Sunnis complain are used to target their community.
“They betrayed the Awakening project, and therefore they will pay the price,” Shabib said.
The new prime minister is making efforts to build bridges, and on Saturday he announced that he had ordered the Iraqi air force to end the bombardment of residential areas, even in Sunni-dominated towns controlled by the Islamic State. The indiscriminate airstrikes — often using inaccurate barrel bombs — had fuelled anger against the state.
Incorporating the Shia militias into the national guard is also likely to be challenging, said Raoul Alcala, a former US adviser to Iraq’s National Security Council.
“I don’t think it’s possible or feasible,” he said. “The militias have never wanted to be controlled by anybody except for their designated leaders. I’d be very surprised if the model would work, but it’s a noble effort.”
A Defence Ministry spokesman did not respond to calls for comment on the strategy.
Kataib Hezbollah, a Shia militia designated a terrorist organisation by the United States, has more than tripled in size over the past three months and has more than 30,000 fighters on active duty, said Sheikh Jassim Al Saidi, Imam of one of the organisation’s Baghdad mosques. Now the place of worship more resembles a military base as buses of militiamen are ferried in and out between the mosque and the front lines.
“If the government orders us to use our weapons under the control of the state, we will do it,” he said. “But it’s not time for this question yet, and when it is, we will have conditions. We protected the capital, we protected the government, the government can’t stand against the Islamic resistance,” he said, referring to the Shia militias.
Hamid Al Mutlaq, a Sunni member of the parliament’s defence and security committee, said that if the Shia militias were brought onboard, the national guard organisation would simply become a cloak for militia activity.
“What we need to do instead is retrain and rebuild so people feel the army represents them and the police represent them,” he said.
WP-BLOOMBERG
