Syrian War’s Spillover Poses New Peril for Fragile Iraq
By TIM ARANGO
Nine months after United States forces left Iraq, Syria’s civil war is
highlighting its security shortcomings, straining its sectarian tensions
and pushing its Shiite-led government closer to Iran.
Syrian War’s Spillover Threatens a Fragile Iraq
Hussein Malla/Associated Press
A Free Syrian Army soldier in Aleppo looks through a mirror that helps him see government troops.
By TIM ARANGO
Published: September 24, 20
Ali al-Mashhadani/Reuters
Syrian refugees arrived at a camp in Anbar Province,
Iraq, in August. Iraq’s leader is now ordering guards to block adult
men.
Fearing that Iraq’s insurgents will unite with extremists in Syria to
wage a two-front battle for Sunni dominance, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki recently ordered guards at the western border to block adult
men, even husbands and fathers with families in tow, from crossing into
Iraq along with thousands of refugees seeking to escape the grinding war
next door.
Farther north, Iraqi officials have another concern, also related to the
fighting across the border. Turkish warplanes have stepped up attacks
on the mountain hide-outs of Kurdish insurgents galvanized by the war in
Syria, underscoring Iraq’s inability to control its own airspace.
The hardening of the antagonists’ positions in Syria — reverberating
across Iraq — was made clear Monday at the United Nations when the new
special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, gave a bleak appraisal of the conflict to the Security Council and said he saw no prospect for a breakthrough anytime soon.
The Syrian war’s spillover has called attention to uncomfortable
realities for American officials: despite nearly nine years of military
engagement, an effort that continues today with a $19 billion weapons
sales program, Iraq’s security is uncertain and its alliance with the
theocratic government in Tehran is growing. Iraq’s Shiite-dominated
leadership is so worried about a victory by Sunni radicals in Syria that
it has moved closer to Iran, which shares a similar interest in
supporting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
There is already some indication that Sunni insurgents in Iraq have
tried to coordinate with Syrian fighters to set off a regional sectarian
war, Iraqi tribal leaders said.
“Fighters from Anbar went there to support their sect, the Sunnis,” said
Sheik Hamid al-Hayes, a tribal leader in Anbar Province, in western
Iraq, who once led a group of former insurgents who switched sides and
joined the Americans in fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq.
In response, the United States has tried to secure its interests in Iraq. It has unsuccessfully pressed Iraq
to halt flights from Iran that traverse Iraqi airspace to ferry weapons
and fighters to the Assad government, although The Associated Press
reported that over the weekend a government spokesman said Iraq would
begin random searches of Iranian aircraft.
While some Congressional leaders have threatened to cut off aid to Iraq
if the flights do not stop, the United States is trying to speed up
weapons sales to Iraq to secure it as an ally, said Lt. Gen. Robert L.
Caslen Jr., the American commander in charge of that effort. As regional
security deteriorates, the United States is finding it hard to deliver
the weapons — especially antiaircraft systems — quickly enough to
satisfy the Iraqis, who in some cases are looking elsewhere, including
Russia.
“Although they want a strategic partnership with the United States, they
recognize the vulnerability, and they are interested in going with the
nation that will be able to provide them, and meet their need, their
capabilities gap, as quickly as possible,” said General Caslen, who
oversees a Pentagon office here, under the authority of the American
Embassy, that brokers weapons sales to Iraq.
The United States is providing Iraq with refurbished antiaircraft guns,
free of charge, but they will not arrive until June. In the meantime,
the Iraqis have collected cold war-era missiles found in a junkyard on
an air base north of Baghdad, and they are trying to get them in working
order. Iraq is negotiating with Russia to buy air defense systems that
could be delivered much more quickly than those bought from the United
States.
“Iraq recognizes they don’t control their airspace, and they are very
sensitive to that,” General Caslen said. Each time Turkish fighter jets
enter Iraq’s airspace to bomb Kurdish targets, he said, Iraqi officials
“see it, they know it and they resent it.”
Iskander Witwit, a former Iraqi Air Force officer and member of
Parliament’s security committee, said, “God willing, we will be arming
Iraq with weapons to be able to shoot down those planes.”
The American military withdrew at the end of last year after
negotiations for an extended troop presence collapsed because the Iraqis
would not agree to extend legal immunities to any remaining force. Once
the Americans left, Iraq celebrated its sovereignty, even as military
officials in both countries fretted about the deficiencies of Iraq’s
military and sought ways to work together that would not require a
public debate about immunities.
Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could
result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on
training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to
General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently
deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with
intelligence.
So even as the country leans closer to Iran and contemplates buying
weapons from Russia, it still seeks the military support of the United
States. This is because Iraq is still facing a potent insurgency whose
frequent recent attacks have raised questions about the ability of
Iraq’s counterterrorism forces to face the threat.
In Anbar, said Mr. Hayes, the tribal leader, insurgents have created Al
Qaeda-affiliated units under the name the Free Iraqi Army, to mimic the
banner under which Syrian Sunnis are fighting. “They are having meetings
and are recruiting,” he said. The group also has a Twitter account and a
Facebook page.
Similar units have sprouted in Diyala Province, and they have used a
call to arms in Syria as a recruitment tool, according to local
officials. When fighters die in Syria, local families hold funerals in
secret so as not to alert the Shiite-dominated security forces that they
have sent their sons to Syria. One such recent funeral was held on the
pretext that the fallen fighter had died in a car crash in Jordan, and
not, as had actually happened, in fighting in Aleppo, according to a
local intelligence officer.
As Western policy makers consider intervention in Syria, they worry that
country’s war could turn into a full-blown sectarian conflict like the
one that engulfed Iraq from 2005 to 2007. For Iraqis who fled to Syria
and are now returning, not by choice but to save their own lives, Syria
already is Iraq.
“It’s exactly like it was in Iraq,” said Zina Ritha, 29, who returned to
Baghdad after several years in Damascus. Referring to the Free Syrian
Army, Ms. Ritha said: “The F.S.A. is destroying Shia houses. They are
kidnapping people, especially the Iraqis and the Shia.”
On a recent morning, Ms. Ritha and her mother-in-law visited a center
for returnees here, where families collect a payment of four million
Iraqi dinars, or about $3,400, from the government. For Iraqis in Syria,
people at the center said, there is no security. Shiites are attacked
by rebels, Sunnis by government forces. And at any time they can be
targeted just for being foreigners.
Abdul Jabbar Sattar, a single man in his 40s, is Sunni. After a bombing
in Damascus that killed several top security officials in July, his
neighborhood endured round-the-clock shelling. He returned to Iraq with
one set of clothes, and little money, having been robbed as he fled.
“It’s the same situation as it used to be in Iraq,” he said. “Everyone is afraid of one another.”
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