Civilians flee the city as Iraq prepares for a long fight. © AA/TT/TT News Agency/PA Images
Read more on the Mosul crisis: What and who is ISIS?
Everything that I have read so far about the capture of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq by the terrorist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Shams (ISIS) has focused on the group’s links to Al Qaeda. This may be true, but it completely misses the point. This is not about Al Qaeda. What we’re seeing is another subset of the civil war within Islam.
Through the British and American mission in Iraq, we released forces that we could neither comprehend nor control. We went in to Iraq with the belief that the process of democracy cures all ills. What we did not understand is that by knocking Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime out of power, we replaced one form of autocracy with another. In moving the country to the appearance of democracy, we automatically created a Shia state, because about 60 per cent of the population is Shia. It is no surprise that the Sunnis, who had reigned over the country in one form or another since the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages, should try to regain that power.
It is essential that the Shia Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki scrapes together the political will and military power to take back Mosul. You can’t have your country dismembered around you and claim to be exercising political power. It is still possible for him to take back the city—it is unclear how coherent the military force occupying Mosul is and if they could withstand a determined, conventional attack. If the prime minister can turn this around, it will consolidate his position. But, if Maliki fails, then we are at a significant point in a process that Prospect has already referred to as a “new cold war” between Sunni and Shia forces in the Middle East.
The training of insurgents in, and supply of weapons from, Syria has had an impact, but one must not underestimate the influence of external powers on the situation. The myriad terrorist opposition groups in Syria will be supported by Sunni money while the state terrorism of the Assad regime is propped up by Shi’ite Iran. Hezbollah I see as, to some extent, an Iranian proxy: Iran supplies them with money, training and weapons. ISIS, the militant Al Qaeda offshoot which seeks to establish an independent Sunni state across the Iraqi-Syrian border, has reportedly benefitted from Qatari and Saudi money.
I don’t see a role for the west in this. History tells us that religious wars are usually measured in decades, not years or months. Unless the west was willing to take part in this conflict until the end, whatever the cost, then it’s better not to intervene at all. These divisions go back to the seventh Century AD: you can’t just put an Elastoplast over them. Any peace process has to happen within the Islamic community.
We’re not going to have anything that looks like a peace process until either side makes significant gains. This battle has a long way to run before either of them can say that. But the worry is that one day, this war might not be fought between proxies and surrogates. It might be fought between nation states.
As told to Josh Lowe
Read more on the Mosul crisis: What and who is ISIS?
