Iraq at an Impasse
Staff Writer Emmett McNamara explores failure to form a government in Iraq after the last elections.
On August 29th, Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential Iraqi politician, tweeted “I hereby announce my final withdrawal” from politics. Several hours later, his followers had stormed the Green Zone (home to foreign embassies and many government facilities in Baghdad), resulting in a confrontation that led to the deaths of almost 20 people. The violence only ended at the demand of Sadr himself, who publicly rebuked his followers for their actions.
This outbreak of violence was not random - it had been brewing for months as Iraq descended into political chaos in response to failed negotiations aimed at forming a government based on the national election of October 2021. The political scene in post-ISIS Iraq has largely been dominated by Iranian-backed militias and their affiliated political wings. These militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, have organized themselves into an electoral alliance known as Fatah. In the leadup to the 2021 elections they were the second largest party - after Sadr’s - and many analysts expected them to retain their strong position.
In a surprising turn of events, Muqtada al-Sadr’s party won the most seats, with Fatah falling dramatically to become only the fifth largest party. The election was marked by low turnout, with many parties - including Sadr’s at one point - announcing a boycott. These elections are particularly notable as they were originally scheduled to occur sometime in 2022, however in response to widespread protests, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi called for early elections in June of 2021, before ultimately holding them in October.
Sadr and Fatah both largely compete for the votes of Shia Arabs. However, Fatah represents those often religiously conservative Iraqis who prefer closer ties with
neighboring Shia Iran. That is not to say that Sadr is Western aligned or secular. In fact, Sadr comes from a long and influential family of Shia clerics. What sets Sadr apart is his deep commitment to Iraqi nationalism that places a heavy emphasis on removing all foreign influence from Iraqi politics. Part of his notoriety comes from the fact that he led the ‘Mahdi Army,’ a Shiite insurgent group that targeted American soldiers during their occupation of Iraq. Many feel that he has given voice to the many Iraqis who resent the growing influence of Iran in Iraq. While many Iraqis welcomed Iranian aid against ISIS, they are uncomfortable with the continued presence and influence of Iranian militias. While Sadr and his followers had won the most seats in the October elections, forming a functioning government was by no means a guarantee.
Iraq is a parliamentary republic with a president as head of state and a prime minister as head of the government. Sadr, while taking the most votes and seats, needed to form a coalition to enter government. A simple parliamentary majority is required for the appointment of a prime minister. Filling the post of President is a much more complicated task that requires ethnic consideration. In the post-invasion era the president of Iraq has always been a Kurd, an ethnic group that inhabits the northern part of the country and makes up between 15-20% of the population. The Kurds have their own autonomous region with their own local government and political parties.
In order to form his coalition, Sadr first reached out to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the largest of the Kurdish parties. After reaching a tentative agreement with the KDP, Sadr then worked out a similar deal with influential Sunni Arabs as well. This multiethnic alliance theoretically should have secured Sadr a majority, and a functioning government.
But his opponents, Fatah chief among them, were desperate to stymie his efforts. They delayed votes and appointments by months, usually through byzantine legal processes, but occasionally by force as well.
After months of failure, Sadr abruptly instructed the MPs aligned with him to resign from the parliament. 73 lawmakers suddenly resigned, making it almost impossible for any coalition to reach the numbers needed to form a government. Sadr had hoped to spark a mass resignation beyond his bloc, triggering another set of elections. Sadr and his followers were further enraged when instead of dissolving in order to facilitate early elections, the Iraqi Parliament swore in new members. Iraqi electoral law requires that if a member resigns, they are to be replaced by the candidate with the second most votes in their district. In effect, the resignation of the Sadrist bloc resulted in the swelling of Fatah (and their allies) to a majority of 122 seats.
The final straw came in August of 2022, when Sadr’s mentor, Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri, publicly announced his retirement from what is usually a lifetime religious position and asked his followers to look to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for guidance. This was tantamount to a significant and unexpected rebuke of Sadr that in turn led to his resignation from politics and in turn pushed thousands of his supporters to riot in the heavily protected streets of Baghdad, even going so far as to storm the parliament building itself.
After ten months of deadlock that had failed to result in a government and riots that led to more than twenty deaths and hundreds injured, Iraq finds itself still without a government and in uncertain territory. The one thing that is for certain though is that this
is not a sustainable state of affairs. The Iraqi people have suffered without a reliable government to provide services, and are rapidly losing faith in their country's leadership. Experts are divided on what a post-Sadr Iraq will look like - on whether it will open a vacuum for Iran and its proxies, if a new movement will replace the Sadrists, or if Muqtada al-Sadr is even being honest on his intention to retire. Regardless, the precedent of armed parties influencing the formation and process of government does not bode well for the future of Iraq. While the elites and foreign powers fight each other, the Iraqi people will continue to pay the price.
Iraq deserves a better future after decades of suffering under dictatorial rule, warfare, and sectarian violence. It deserves a better class of politicians - better than Sadr or his opponents - it deserves non-sectarian public servants dedicated to improving their country. The status quo of the last few years, and the last few months especially, is unsustainable for the Iraqi people, and either the system changes - and soon - or it will break.
The Islamic State- Beaten but Not Broken
Staff writer, Emmet McNamara, looks into the military defeat of the Islamic State and its potential repercussions on the international community.
In the early morning hours of February 3rd, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, the second leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, was killed in an American operation in northwest Syria. His death followed that of the organization's founder and self proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. Al-Qurashi’s death is an important milestone in continuing the struggle against the forces of ISIS - yet it appears to have overshadowed the more significant events of the previous month.
On January 20th, a truck in the northeastern Syrian city of Al-Hasakah suddenly veered towards the walls of the Al-Sina’a prison. It detonated, marking the beginning of a prison break at the largest detention camp of ISIS fighters in the world, and the largest and most complex operation of the organization since their territorial defeat three years earlier.
The military defeat of ISIS and the loss of its territory did not mean the end of the organization's existence, despite the rhetoric and lack of attention paid by many Western governments. For the tens of thousands of the organization's fighters, there were few options. Many fought to the death, others attempted to slink away into unpopulated or barren areas to try and avoid detection - but thousands of fighters, along with their wives and children, were either captured or surrendered. These fighters have been held in a kind of purgatory - crammed into massive detention centers for years with no end in sight.
The Al-Sina’a prison in Al-Hasakah was one of these detention centers and held an estimated 3,500 and 4,000 prisoners, all either ISIS militants or their children - some of whom were child soldiers. Al-Hasakah is under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a multi-ethnic - but primarily Kurdish - armed group seeking to carve out an autonomous zone in northwest Syria.
Al-Sina’a has long been infamous for holding both the former militants and their children (the so called ‘cubs of the caliphate’) in atrocious and inhumane conditions. The prison is overcrowded, with food, water, and medicine being in short supply. 700 of the prison's occupants are children, and their continued incarceration without charge or chance of rehabilitation is particularly problematic.
Yet it's important to note that these conditions are not on account of the SDF’s cruelty but instead of a lack of resources. Of the 3,500-4,000 prisoners, only a quarter are from Syria. The diverse makeup of the prison population is representative of the global nature of ISIS' membership. Indeed, the continued presence of these multinational prisoners is due to the refusal of the rest of the world to repatriate their citizens who left to join ISIS. It is an underreported absurdity that the international community has abandoned the people of Syria and Iraq to deal foreign citizens. So these fighters are stuck, with their countries unwilling to bring them home and prosecute them. They have no chance at rehabilitation by rotting away in sweltering inhumane conditions surrounded by hardened terrorists. Without any program of rehabilitation, the militants remain ready and committed to their ideology. This situation is particularly unjust for the children of these prisons, imprisoned for the crimes of their parents, still surrounded by a hateful and twisted ideology.
Beyond its horrid conditions, Al-Sina'a has been commonly referred to as a "ticking time bomb" for an ISIS resurgence. Several months earlier the Aisyah, the police of Rojava, had intercepted an earlier attempt by ISIS to attack this very same prison. On January 20th, they were not so lucky.
The ISIS attack was sudden and intense. The first car bomb cleared the way for an ISIS cell to rush into the prison, bringing arms to the prisoners, who had been ready and rioting for their comrades - an indication of the complexity of the operation - before they raided the prison armory. What followed was the beginning of a brutal week of urban warfare. Fighting raged for days as the SDF, with air support from the American led-international coalition, mobilized troops to confront the sudden and massive insurgency. The residents of the Ghweiran neighborhood of Al-Hasakah, where the Al-Sina’a prison is located, found themselves in the midst of a ferocious battle. Approximately 45,000 people were displaced on the first day of fighting alone. It also appeared that the SDF had prematurely declared victory at times - after the battle had been declared over, a new ISIS pocket would either be found in door to door sweeps or would suddenly open fire on SDF forces. When the dust truly did settle, close to 500 militants and escapees were killed, with close to one hundred SDF fighters and prisoner workers dying as well. Worryingly, it is still unclear how many members of ISIS were able to escape.
Though the battle ended with the defeat and capture of the prisoners and their would be liberators, it is frankly too early to conclusively call this operation a victory against the ISIS. It is still unknown who the escapees are and if high level leaders may have been able to disappear and rejoin their organization's insurgency. Notably, experts worry about the attack’s implications. It is a clear propaganda victory for ISIS, demonstrating that they still have the capability to stage large, complex, and deadly operations. This attack was also not an isolated event. On the contrary, the last few months have seen a resurgence in ISIS' activity in both Iraq and Syria. When this prison break is viewed with the proper context - that of an emboldened ISIS willing and able to operate a cross border insurgency - the implications are worrying.
Which leads to the question - what is to be done? Multiple conditions must be addressed in order to remedy the underlying problems that led to this attack. More significant aid must immediately be distributed to the people of Iraq and Syria that are responsible for ensuring hardened ISIS veterans remain behind bars. Assistance should provide for both more humane conditions for prisoners as well as address the ability for inmates to properly repatriate back into normal society. In the case of the SDF in Rojava, the issue of Turkey must be addressed as well. Turkey has been hostile to the Kurdish-dominated SDF since its inception. This hostility can be seen in both the Turkish invasions of Rojava as well as in the allegations that Turkey had bombed SDF reinforcements on their way to the Al-Sina’a prison. Continued Turkish aggression towards the SDF in Rojava only serves to pull resources away from the detention of ISIS fighters and produces the instability that allows for the ISIS to continue to fester.
In the long term, the international community must come to terms with the fact that they cannot merely wash their hands of their own civilians and must repatriate the foreigners that joined ISIS. The presence of thousands of foreign fighters held in detention camps in Iraq and Syria is not a viable solution. Only with the action of the international community can this issue be truly resolved. In the future, these attacks will continue to occur unless these changes are made. The rest of the world needs to begin to repatriate their citizens and must stop delegating the task to the people of Syria and Iraq. If nothing is done, the prospects of an ISIS resurgence remain high and the future of northern Syria looks bleak.
Resistance in Syria
Staff writer Emmet McNamara analyzes the continued Syrian opposition to Assad, a decade after Syria’s Arab Spring, while incorporating the role of the international community’s contribution to this conflict.
In early 2011, protests broke out against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria as part of the Arab Spring. The government responded to the protests - whose motto was ‘the people demand removal of the regime’ - with a violent crackdown. The attempted suppression of the protests quickly backfired, with many Syrians beginning to call for a revolution and taking up arms against the regime. The resulting violence quickly escalated into the Syrian Civil War. For years, the civil war has had the attention of the world as the Syrian people struggled against the dictatorial Assad. The Ghouta chemical attacks in 2013 horrified the world, as the regime killed 1,429 people (426 of whom were children) with sarin gas. This blatant massacre prompted the first, of many, foreign interventions in the civil war, as the United States and its allies threatened to retaliate against the regime if all chemical weapons were not turned over. A few years later, ISIS emerged from the power vacuum and conflict in eastern Syria, fighting both the regime and the rebel opposition. This prompted another foreign intervention, as much of the world cooperated to combat the rise of ISIS’ caliphate. The most significant intervention of the entire war though began in 2015, when Russia began a mass bombing campaign in order to support its ally Assad and keep him in power, which has been tragically effective and deadly.
The Syrian Civil War is still ongoing today and has been marked by intense violence, different factions, and the presence and interventions of multiple foreign powers, each with their own proxies. Today the civil war is far from settled, though the Assad regime has conquered, or pacified, large parts of the country - largely as a result of the brutal bombing campaign by its Russian ally. Despite the fact that the conflict is still ongoing, the international community has inexplicably moved on, acting as if the war had been won by Assad’s government. It seems that much of the world, and now recently even the Biden administration, is treating the Syrian Civil War as solved, and is now considering rapprochement towards the regime. This is a gross rehabilitation of a vicious regime. One that has utilized chemical weapons to kill thousands of its own people, and developed horrific new weapons of war, such as barrel bombs. It also ignores and downplays the conflict and continued resistance that occurs within Syria today in cities like Daara and Idlib, and the Kurdish northeast.
The city of Daara in southwestern Syria has been called the ‘birthplace of the Syrian revolution.’ The arrest of two teenagers in 2011 for anti-Assad graffiti led to an outbreak of protests, to which the regime had a brutal and deadly response. This incident was one of the opening salvos of the civil war. Only after seven long years of fighting was Daara largely captured during a Russian-led offensive in 2018. The remaining areas of the city soon came to an agreement with the Assad regime, brokered and guaranteed by Russia.
Disgruntled and dissatisfied by the lack of good faith shown by the regime in honoring their side of the deal, protests broke out in Daara in late July. Assad’s forces responded swiftly in their usual manner - an indiscriminate bombing campaign and siege of the city. The regime specifically targeted the neighborhood of Daara Al-Bahad, whose representative Central Committee has begged for a ceasefire to solve the water and food shortages. To date the regime’s bombings have killed at least 15 people, with some estimates rising to four times that number.
Yet the bombing of Daara has attracted little to no international attention or support. Daraa represents not only the birth of the struggle against Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, but also that it is ongoing. The regime’s ‘control’ of much of its claimed territory is tenuous at best, and fresh resistance is still taking place.
Similarly, fighting has intensified in and around the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria. A Russian bombing campaign seeks to displace the opposition forces that control most of the governorate. This campaign carries additional risks as well - the situation in Idlib is not as straightforward as in Daara. The city of Idlib and much of the governorate is controlled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist group. But a significant portion of the governorate is controlled by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, an opposition group, which risks a larger regional conflict between Turkey and Russia. Russia’s bombing campaign in Northern Syria also extends to areas firmly in control of the Syrian National Army, deep within the so-called Turkish ‘safe zones’ like Afrin.
But the most significant remaining opposition to Assad’s government is the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria - better known as Rojava. To the east of the Euphrates river, Rojava is a self-governing democratic region of Syria. While dominated by the Kurds, Rojava is notably multi-ethnic, especially in the wake of the influx of refugees and internally displaced persons created in the civil war. With its own armed wing - the Syrian Democratic Forces - Rojava has enjoyed great success combating not only Assad’s forces, but ISIS as well. In fact it was the SDF who led much of the ground fighting against ISIS in Syria.
But for the moment, it is not Assad’s regime that poses the greatest threat against the continued existence and independence of Rojava. Ever since President Trump pulled American troops from their supportive role in Rojava, Turkey has carried out a number of operations against Rojava, invading from the north and seizing territory - making the largest remaining resistance to Assad’s rule fight on two fronts. Turkey sees the existence of an independent Kurdish state as a threat, as they harshly oppress and persecute their own Kurdish minority. The threat posed by Turkey to Rojava is so great, the government of Rojava has indicated they would be open to some form of alliance with Assad’s government against Turkey. Yet despite all these challenges, Rojava has maintained its independence, making the recent attitudes towards Assad all the more strange.
Despite the fact that continued resistance to the regime is still ongoing throughout Syria, the last few months have seen a shocking movement towards acceptance of Assad’s regime. The governments of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar have all sent emissaries to meet with Assad in the past year, a stunning change of policy when most of these states have previously harshly opposed him. Interpol, the international police organisation, announced in October that Syria - as in Assad’s government - would be readmitted to the body. Not only is this an immoral recognition of the regime, but in time the government will have access to red notices - the international equivalent of an arrest warrant, allowing the regime to target and harrass dissenters and critics abroad. Recently, even the Biden administration has begun to open negotiations with the regime. Washington is in the early stages of a deal to transport Egyptian natural gas through Jordan and Syria to energy deprived Lebanon - with Assad’s government getting a cut in the process.
This deal would be a betrayal of those who continue to struggle against the regime and would be a disgusting acceptance of someone who has butchered those who protested against him. Worse, it would make the United States complicit in the crimes of Assad’s regime. Supplying Assad with resources like natural gas only makes it easier for him to keep his grip on a country that rejected his rule. The attempt to alleviate Lebanon’s energy crisis is laudable and humanitarian, and doubtlessly would do much in the way of reducing suffering there. But there has to be another way in which Lebanon’s crisis can be relieved without tying the solution to Assad. This deal would not only help legitimize his rule - recognizing him as the power in Syria - it will provide him with material assets to continue his oppression. The money and energy that the regime will gain from this deal could go straight to propagating the security forces that terrorize the Syrian people.
The United States should reject cooperation and recognition with the Assad regime. It is wrong to ignore the continued resistance towards his regime, and to abandon the allies that we have supported in Syria - especially the bastion of resistance that is Rojava in the Northeast. It is wrong for the international community as well to wash their hands of what is happening in Syria, to pretend that the war is over when the humanitarian crisis is still ongoing. The international community should not seek diplomatic rapprochement with Bashar al-Assad, should not let him and his cronies out from the cold. To do so would be an insult to all the Syrians that he has slaughtered and those that continue to languish under his rule.