Daesh gains presence in Iraq by taking advantage of instability
Daesh is taking advantage of the politically and socially volatile scenario in Iraq to carry out attacks that are putting the security forces in check after the terrorist group was defeated on the ground in 2017.
The Gulf country is going through a very unstable situation due to several issues that do not allow the political and social stabilization of the country. On the one hand, massive and violent demonstrations have been taking place since early October last year (with strong confrontations with the police and the army) to denounce the absolute degradation of social services and the lack of opportunities and employment in the face of the country's economic crisis, aggravated by the state's political corruption in recent years.
On the other hand, the Iraqi population itself rejects the US-Iran interference in the country and demands the absolute cessation of the US military presence as well as the interruption of the Iranian intrusion in the internal affairs of the nation. It should be recalled at this point that Iran is characterized by attempts to pull strings in neighboring countries in the Middle East through the Quds Forces, an international division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (Iran's elite military force). Examples of this are: the close links of Iranian forces with Shiite militias active in countries such as Lebanon, with the case of Hezbollah; Iraq, with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF); Yemen, with the activity of Hutu rebels in the Yemeni civil war; or Syria, with Liwa Fatemiyoun, an armed group of Afghan origin present in Syrian territory.
And, obviously, COVID-19 pandemic represents another problem that is plaguing the Iraqi population and causing a certain amount of defenselessness. This is a disease that is devastating the world, with hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of diagnosed cases. Iraq has so far accumulated 90 deaths and nearly 2,000 people affected by this health crisis, which is demanding an extra effort from the Armed Forces to control the situation and monitor compliance with the social containment and distancing measures required to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. This current role of the Iraqi military to monitor the observance of order in the cities is preventing them from focusing their efforts on the fight against terrorism, as they did until now in collaboration with international coalition forces present in Iraq, including the United States, within the bases set up in the Arab country.
The jihadists have intensified their attacks taking advantage of the mobilization of Iraqi troops in the face of the action against the coronavirus and in front of some American soldiers confined to their bases, also as a result of the many attacks suffered by the pro-Iranian Shiite militias. These offensives were carried out with insistence, above all due to the military operation carried out by the US Army on January 3, which killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Forces, through a drone attack in the vicinity of the Baghdad airport, in which Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, vice-president of the PMF, also died; an offensive planned in response to the attack on a military base in Kirkuk that meant the death of a US civilian contractor. This action against the leader of the Revolutionary Guard and the leader of the Popular Mobilization Forces triggered an angry response from the Shiite sphere and the Iranian authorities, based on multiple attacks on military infrastructures of the international coalition in Iraq and even on the assault to the US Embassy in the Iraqi capital.
This multi-front scenario and the lack of political and social cohesion has been a perfect breeding ground for the proliferation of jihadist acts claimed by Daesh.
Coinciding with the fall of the military response against the radical jihadist insurgency, Daesh has had quite a few performances during the month of March. In the region of Janaqin, located in the province of Diyala and close to the border with Iran, he attacked several posts of the security forces, leaving several victims. It also launched mortars against certain neighbourhoods in the towns of Tuz Jurmatu and Amerli (both in the province of Saladin), something it had not done for a couple of years. In this sense, experts on the subject warn about several sleeping cells that may be involved in a new campaign of assassinations to spread fear among the population.
Moreover, Daesh boasts about his resurgence in social networks. Aymenn al-Tamimi, a researcher at the Program on Extremism at the George Washington University, has written about this in his blog. Al-Tamimi did an in-depth examination of the terrorist group's statements, indicating that its propagandists publicize its recent offensives and encourage its followers to "show no mercy in organizing prison escapes and launching attacks. Daesh "sees the pandemic as an opportunity to exploit the divisions and weaknesses of his enemies," he says. At the same time, he gives health advice to his supporters to prevent them from becoming infected.
Nevertheless, the attacks would have increased on average from five to seven a week, far from the hundreds launched in 2014 when the Iraqi government requested international support to prevent the jihadist advance. It was precisely the coalition's help that made it possible to recover the territory conquered by Daesh and his defeat in 2017.
Most observers agree that the threat is not the same. "There is a resurgence of Daesh in some parts of Iraq and also in Syria, but it is unlikely that it could launch a territorial campaign like the one in 2014; what is more likely is a low-level insurgency, similar to the one in the Sinai, particularly in vulnerable areas like Diyala," Hafsa Halawa, a researcher at the Middle East Institute, told an online seminar at the Institute.
It was during November that Daesh returned to the scene. On November 26, the first sign of the terrorist group's reappearance occurred, with three simultaneous explosions killing six people in different parts of Baghdad, mostly Shi'a. The jihadist organization claimed responsibility for these attacks, which undoubtedly reflected Daesh's opportunism to take advantage of a chaotic scenario in order to achieve his interests and regain the lost power he had in 2014.
Another attack was perpetrated by the jihadist organization in the eastern Iraqi city of Diyala on December 2, resulting in two people killed and five injured, all members of the pro-Iranian Shiite militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces (also known as Hashad al-Shaabi), which have been fighting Daesh since its foundation in 2014.
After more recent operations, Iraqi security forces have responded, with the cooperation of the international alliance of which the U.S. is a member. As a last remarkable fact, last Monday they finally attacked, from four fronts, Daesh's positions in the center and north of the country.
"The troops of the Iraqi Army, supported by the federal police and combatants of the People's Mobilization Forces have launched a four-front offensive against the members of Daesh in the provinces of Salah al-Din and Diyala," the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said in an official statement.
This is all happening in a situation of pressing political crisis that brought the past government of Adel Abdul Mahdi to an end, as citizens accused him of corruption and not providing the people with basic services and good working conditions. This led President Barham Saleh to search constantly for a new executive.
Saleh entrusted this mission to Mohamed Tawfiq Allaui, since there were no necessary parliamentary majorities and the diverse political in parliament did not agree to designate a candidate, taking also into account that the president did not want to entrust this mission to a figure close to the Shiite forces dominated by Iran.
However, the move did not work out and Tawfiq Allaui finally resigned, as later candidate Adnan al-Zurfi did. President Barham Saleh turned to Mustafa al-Kazemi, director of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, who, because of the position held, knows the ins and outs of Iraq's complex political landscape quite well.