Nevertheless, it was these types of Sunni revanchists who led the Iraq insurgency prior to 2005, Rayburn argues. Al-Qaeda before that point had played a “secondary role.” Some of the top troublemakers, in fact, moonlighted as insurgents because by day they were acting politicians. These included Khalaf Ulayan, a former officer in Saddam’s army and then a top-ranking Baath-Salafist after Saddam’s fall. Another was Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, one of the Faith Campaign’s ardent Salafist alumni, who then wound up in prison for trying to attack the regime. (Mashhadani became speaker of Iraq’s parliament in 2006, although his performance was so crude and strange that many believed he was on drugs.) Still another insurgent leader was Adnan al-Dulaimi, a former Brotherhood member who had been let out of prison in 1991 following Saddam’s “amnesty” for Islamists – a policy Assad would imitate in 2011, during the early days of Syria’s revolution.
What ultimately shot al-Qaeda into a primary insurgent role was its vast fundraising apparatus and deft assembly of foreign muhajireen fighters from all over the Levant, Maghreb and Persian Gulf. Once again, Assad’s regime provided the gateway into Iraq for the non-Iraqi ultras, as hundreds arrived at Damascus International Airport, then made their way east — often with the connivance of Shawkat’s mukhabarat —before finally alighting in Anbar and Ninewah provinces. Rayburn writes that based on captured al-Qaeda documents, between 2006 and 2007, around 700 muhajireen made it into western Ninewah via Syria, a flow so heavy that a “Border Emir” had to be appointed to handle all the traffic. (Now that there’s no border between Syria and Iraq, one wonders if there’s still an emir.)
The transformation of al-Qaeda in Iraq to the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) was, in fact, a publicity stunt designed to mollify Iraqis who believed the organization to be too foreign in its makeup, and too heavy-handed in its tactics. The rebranding was also meant to deter the rising Sunni participation in Iraq’s democratic political process – rejectionism having been the takfiris’ wellspring of popular support. The ISI was the outgrowth of the Mujahideen Shura Council, which consisted of al-Qaeda and token Iraqi Salafist groups. Instead of a global or regional caliphate, the Islamic State wanted to partition Iraq along sectarian lines and rule the Sunni-dominant areas of the northwest and central provinces. Hardline Islamist clerics rejected this idea because they rejected the notion of nation-states tout court; local Sunni populations rejected the Islamic State’s draconian “governance” style, which involved murdering tribal leaders and sheikhs (herein lay the seeds of the celebrated “Awakening”); and al-Qaeda’s former allies, including the Baath-Salafists, finally deemed the group too psychotic even for them.
But it was widespread Sunni disillusionment that registered the group’s fall from prominence. In his forthcoming book, Rayburn gives a telling anecdote about a police commander in the Anbar city of Habbaniyah who, on Christmas Eve 2007, saw young Sunnis dancing with their girlfriends, letting off fireworks, and drinking alcohol. He asked them how it was possible that they could now act as Christians when just a year ago they were committed Zarqawists. The response came: “Al Qaeda? That was last year!”
That was seven years ago.
IS’s recrudescence in the intervening period owes as much to JRTN and Baath-Salafism as it does to Saddam’s defunct security sector. Hisham al-Hashimi, who has written what is to date the most detailed organizational anatomy of IS, has emphasized its reliance on Baathist remnants of the upper echelons of Baghdadi’s revamped terrorist franchise. The head of IS’s powerful Security and Intelligence Council, for instance, is Abu-Ali al-Anbari, a former intelligence officer in the Iraqi Army. The entirety of the three-person council, notes Hashimi, consists of ex-intelligence officers from the Saddam era, all of whom were handpicked by the Samarra-born Baghdadi. The Council is responsible for the caliph’s movements and engagements; overseeing the implementation of sharia court rulings; and running IS’s counterintelligence services to protect against infiltration – a task well suited to former mukhabarat.
Indeed, Baghdadi’s tendency toward Iraqi nativism in the staffing of IS’s leadership positions dwarfs the multi-national promiscuity of the founder of al-Qaeda’s Iraq franchise as Baghdadi’s forebear, the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. What Hashimi calls “Arab expatriates” (foreign fighters) are typically relegated to the Islamic jurisprudence, and also IS’s extensive media establishment. The most important IS bureau is the Military Council. Its former head was Adnan Ismai’l Najm al-Biblawi, who was killed on June 5. Biblawi was a captain in Saddam’s army. Three of the remaining IS Military Council co-chairs are all former army officers.
In an interview with al-Arabiya last March, Hashimi observed that much of IS’s newest cadres were made in the “incubator” that was Camp Bucca, the detainee prison established by coalition forces and subsequently shuttered by Maliki. Baghdadi himself was a former inmate. “When Bucca prison was shut down there was not something called ISIS, when the camp was evacuated,” Hashimi said. “But most of the leaders of ISIS are military personnel, or former army officers from the Baath party or the Iraqi dissolved bodies, who could have joined [the] al-Qaeda organization, or Islamic State of Iraq in Bucca prison.”
This is another way of saying that wartime exigencies, money, marriages of convenience, America’s myopic occupational policies and its categorical withdrawal from Iraq, have all conspired to determine IS’s trajectory as much as jihadist doctrine has. In a sense, Saddamism now comes wrapped in the shahada. A personality cult as well as a desire to outmaneuver rivals and competitors continue to govern the Republic of Fear. Therein may lie IS’s future undoing, even as it busies itself with shoring up weapons, influence and territory in the present.
Already, Iraqi tribal leaders such as Anbar’s Sheikh Hatem al-Suleiman have indicated their willingness to turn on IS, but not until and unless Maliki is removed from power. “The point is that Maliki’s tyranny and the lack of strong leadership forced some Sunni cities to accept ISIS over Maliki’s sectarian government,” Sheikh Suleiman told Kurdish news portal Rudaw, adding that he was confident that the tribes would eventually expel IS as they did in the mid-aughts.
Suleiman’s assessment tracks with what Rayburn and others had observed in the last two years with respect to how Maliki set the stage for the grand return of all extremists. Shortly after Douri’s proof-of-life video surfaced, he sent Middle East watchers an email explaining how the Iraqi premier’s crackdown on the Sunni political class – namely the al-Iraqiya party of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi – was being pursued. Maliki’s true purpose, Rayburn maintained, was to eliminate any and all credible challengers to his authority, such as Iraqi Vice President Tariq Hashemi, who was driven out of the country in 2011 on spurious “terrorism” charges. Iraqiya’s contenders would thus be replaced with unpopular or irrelevant Sunni non-starters. More often than not, these were unreconstructed insurgents. Two were Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the Faith Campaign Salafist; and Misha’an Jabouri, another prominent ex-Saddamist turned hardcore insurgent. Here is what Rayburn predicted in 2012:
“By fracturing the Iraqiya coalition that has sat astride the Sunni political center for the past two years, the Malikiyoun [Maliki camp] will not just be opening up space for protective Maliki henchmen like Jabouri and Mashhandani (and other willing tools who will emerge as time passes); they will also open up space for radical rejectionists. The Malikiyoun have ultimately succeeded in ending Tariq Hashemi’s career; but what will happen to the nearly quarter of a million Iraqis who voted for him? And if the Malikiyoun ultimately succeed in driving off Ayad Allawi, as they certainly aim to do, what will happen to the more than 400,000 Iraqis who voted for him? In which direction will this sizable Sunni-majority constituency… migrate? Will they drift, as the Malikiyoun wish, toward the Malikiyoun’s preferred Sunni proxies, like Misha’an Jabouri, Mashhadani, and the ‘rump’ Iraqiyah? Or will they, having seen their chosen representatives destroyed by a Maliki government whose motives they perceive as sectarian, drift more toward radical options – like Izzat al-Douri?”
Opening the door to JRTN, Rayburn concluded, was tantamount to opening the door to the takfiris.
Several months prior to this analysis, in December 2011, Maliki was in Washington meeting with US officials to discuss the ongoing US-Iraqi partnership. Then CIA Director David Petraeus was imploring him to help with international efforts to pressure Assad into abandoning power. Maliki countered that Assad’s fall would mean civil war, the mayhem of which would undoubtedly bleed over into Iraq – an outcome that transpired precisely because of the failure to remove Assad.
Then Maliki met with President Obama. According to Gordon and Trainor’s recounting of this conversation, the president told the premier: “Some people will think that our withdrawal will bring more influence by Iran. I am confident in your independent leadership and we accept that Iraq needs a normal relationship with Iran. But as partners we must say our main problem with Iran is their nuclear ambition. We said we would not use Iraq as a platform to attack Iran, but in Iraq there are groups supported by Iran who target our people. This is a major concern. We would prefer to resolve the issue of the militias by diplomatic means.” This, even as White House officials joked that Iraq’s Transportation Minister Hadi al-Amari, one of Suleimani’s agents for negotiating with Washington, was dressed in a tie – starkly out of the Iranian fashion custom. Obama also reassured Maliki that the United States was not seeking to militarily overthrow Assad.
IS moved into Syria from Iraq not long thereafter. Today, the militias Obama was referring to are asking for US airpower to defeat IS. And Obama’s administration has apparently given up on Maliki’s “independent leadership” and asked him to step down, too, though not in so many words. Meanwhile, those who helped destroy Iraq long before America ever got there, are doing so again not long after America has gone.
Saddam’s ghost must be smiling.
