[Midden-Oosten] Assad’s secret ingredient? The Iraq military’s unknown invasion of Syria - Omar Sabbour, Huffington Post
Jeff
meisner op xs4all.nl
Zo Jul 23 07:09:15 CEST 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5972076be4b0f1feb89b42c
Assad's secret ingredient? The Iraq military's unknown invasion of Syria
Huffington Post 07/22/2017 07:52 am ET
Omar Sabbour, Contributor
Omar Sabbour is an independent Egyptian writer and activist.
In the past year or so, much has been made of the Assad regime's
victories in different areas of Syria. From Aleppo to Daraya and most
recently the besieged Homs suburb of Al-Waer, the regime recaptured
bastions of Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades across the country. Whilst
the Assad regime's victories have often been put under the label of the
"Syrian Army" in general media coverage, the reality of who exactly
constitutes that army is generally very different.
Whilst the dominant role of pro-regime foreign militias has been
relatively underplayed in general media coverage (especially when
compared to the attention given to foreign fighters travelling to Syria
to fight for groups such as ISIS), what in particular has been little
covered is the role of Iraqi state-backed brigades in the fighting:
sectarian Iraqi Shia brigades known collectively as part of the "Popular
Mobilisation Units" (PMUs) or _al-Hashd al-Sha'abi_ (_Hashd_ for short).
Possessing a sectarian-doctrinal loyalty to the Iranian theocracy, the
PMUs receive simultaneous Western and Iranian military backing in the
fight against ISIS and other Sunni insurgents inside Iraq. However like
ISIS their fighting is not limited just to the borders of Iraq; they are
a transnational force who believe in fighting for Iran's cross-border
"Islamic nation".
Similarly, in stark contrast to the substantial attention devoted in
official Western statements to "ISIS' trampling of national borders",
little has been made of the same process taking place by the PMUs and
indeed other pro-Iran groups such as Hezbollah (the latter has also come
to experience a relative rapprochement with the United States in the
post-Arab Spring era with US officials poignantly declaring that they do
not view Hezbollah as a threat, and with the Lebanese Army serving as a
security and intelligence conduit between the two sides in the greater
fight against Sunni jihadism; indeed there have even been reports of
direct coordination against Jabhat al-Nusra).
Numbering somewhere in the region of 20,000+ fighters spread across a
dozen core constituent groups (details of the individual PMU factions
can be found here in English and Arabic), the PMUs fighting in Syria are
the single largest component within the pro-Iran coalition fighting for
the Assad regime in Syria - twice outnumbering Hezbollah. They view
their fighting in Syria as part of an ideological "holy war" - albeit a
Shia rather than Sunni one - and have been accused of war crimes inside
Syria as well as Iraq. The sectarian nature of their Syrian intervention
is reflected in the areas that the PMU groups profess to be fighting in,
with the bulk of their fighting concentrated not in the known ISIS
strongholds of Raqqa, al-Hasakah or Deir al-Zor but mainly in West Syria
and the far-away, anti-ISIS popular bastions of the mainstream Sunni
rebel forces (mainly local Free Syrian Army and Islamic Front
battalions) in Hama, Homs, Aleppo, Rural Damascus and Dara'a. In many
such crucial battles, as in the regime's attempts to regain control of
Damascus' besieged suburbs and Aleppo, the Iraqi brigades played a
dominant front-line role. Not all PMU groups have however joined in the
fighting in Syria, with the _Saraya al-Salam _("Peace Companies") of the
influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr notably refusing to do so.
In both Syria and Iraq sectarian PMU groups have been accused of
carrying out sectarian cleansing in Sunni areas (often under US
air-cover); including emptying villages from their inhabitants, razing
their homes to the ground, and partaking in extreme brutality and
torture against their opponents. Inside Iraq the militias receive direct
military support (including aerial cover) from the US and its allies as
well as salaries, machinery and arms provided by the Western-backed
Iraqi government (whilst the US has also taken part in training select
PMU groups). The PMUs have arguably played the most decisive role in the
Assad regime's victories in the past year, surpassing the much more
media-reported role of Hezbollah. It was their increased presence that
was decisive in capturing rebel-held strongholds (which Hezbollah and
the Syrian Army for years proved uncapable of), most prominently East
Aleppo and the Damascus suburb of Daraya. Though not as extensive, there
have also been reports of regular Iraqi security personnel belonging to
SWAT teams, Special Operation Forces (SOF) and 'Rapid Response Units'
fighting alongside the PMUs in Syria.
The years-long Western backing of Iraqi brigades who fight for Assad in
Syria has received scant to little coverage in mainstream Western media,
despite both their decisive role in support of Assad and the reality of
their Western backing being well-reported by Syrian groups and
activists. Ironically, much of 'alternative' media and anti-war
platforms have also similarly largely ignored their critical
intervention inside Syria, perhaps viewing it as an uncomfortable,
complex contradiction to a long-propagated and comfortable (yet false
and simplistic) 'regime-change' narrative.
Meanwhile, in much mainstream media coverage from the frontlines of
Mosul, it would be common to find BBC and Sky News journalists declaring
that they were "embedded with the Iraqi Army" whilst the flags of a PMU
faction could be seen clearly flying in the background. Yet whilst this
form of coverage (of presenting sect-based militias to Western audiences
as a 'national' - i.e. non-sectarian - regular army) can be deceiving,
the PMU groups nonetheless have indeed been the backbone of the Iraqi
state's forces and long constituted the closest Iraq had to an effective
'army'. There is thus a combined 'mainstream' and 'alternative' media
failure on much of reporting regarding Syria.
Whilst having previously qualified as a 'substate militia' - albeit one
still operating with official state sanction - as of November 2016 the
'militias' finally and officially became legally integrated into the
Iraqi Armed Forces. Their fighters are thus salaried members of the
Iraqi military under the command of the Iraqi Commander in Chief, the
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Thus the Iraqi PMUs are in fact no
longer 'militias' (indeed, some PMU leaders insist on no longer being
called this), but in fact Iraqi military brigades.
What this means, in other words, is that the Iraqi military is occupying
Syria.
Western governments have of course been fully aware for years that the
same PMU brigades who they support inside Iraq also fight across the
border for Assad in Syria, yet they have for years kept this quiet and
relied on the lack of coverage of the issue in Western media (as with so
many other aspects of Syria, a lack of coverage not helped by the
'complexity' of the issue). Indeed, the US and UK arguably allowed and
facilitated the capture of the revolutionary, democratically-governed
town of Daraya in an offensive led by Iraqi brigades in August 2016 -
blocking Saudi and Qatari military supplies to the rebels via the
Jordanian border whilst taking no action against the thousands of Iraqi
state fighters entering Syria to fight for Assad. The 'evacuated' or
'transferred' (to use the regime's terminologies) residents of Daraya
joined the growing list of towns which have been recaptured from the
regime and allegedly "cleansed" of their original inhabitants.
Whilst the PMUs have always been state-backed - meaning that the
distinction between 'state-sanctioned militia' and 'official military
brigade' can be a fine one - clarifying the nuances in the terminology
is nonetheless an important endeavour. For terminology plays a large
part in the confusion - and for Western power-holders, obfuscation - of
the decisive role of the PMU brigades inside Syria. Within the dominant
existing lexicon the PMUs are commonly referred to as 'Iraqi Shia' or
'Iranian proxy' militias, yet more accurate definitions (especially
since the PMUs' legal integration into the Iraqi military) would clearly
underline the statist nature of these groups, whether that entails
labeling them specifically as 'Iraqi military PMUs' or simply as 'Iraqi
military brigades'. Furthermore, acknowledging these forces as official
state actors opens up a series of legal questions. Indeed, it should be
remembered that the US began its destruction of Iraq in 1991 after it
invaded 'sovereign' Kuwait, yet today it is effectively supporting the
'sovereign' troops of its regional ally occupying Syrian territory.
There are two crucial factors that have provided Western governments
with the necessary deniability of this pro-Assad role in Syria (though
they have been seldom interrogated on the matter). The first is the
claim that the groups are militias, i.e. with the implication of being
"out-of-control" non-state actors on which Western governments could
exercise no leverage. Yet this is patently mistaken: as well as indirect
Western arms provisions via the Iraqi government, warplanes of the
US-led coalition have also directly provided vital aerial cover to PMU
brigades (including such Assad-supporting groups as Iraqi Hezbollah, the
League of the Righteous/_Asa'ib ahl al-Haq_ and the Badr organisation)
in military operations against ISIS in Iraq.
Indeed, the PMU brigades can be commonly found in Iraq driving US
Humveys and APCs provided by the Iraqi government, and have even been
documented fighting for Assad inside Syria in US tanks and Humveys.
Meanwhile the flight of Iraqi PMU fighters from Baghdad to Damascus
takes place directly under the eyes of US military personnel and
officials present in the country (for symbolic value, a US military base
surrounds and protects the same Baghdad airport which serves as Assad's
Iraqi conduit). The US could easily condition military support to the
Iraqi government to the "verifiable closure of the country's airspace...
to pro-Assad convoys" - and has been advised to do so since 2013 - but
chooses not to.
The second factor is the relegation of the Iraqi nature of these groups
to simply being 'Iranian proxies'. Indeed, commonly used terms by many
anti-Assad Syrians for the pro-Assad PMUs include 'sectarian militias',
'Iraqi Shia militias', 'Iranian-backed militias' or even simply 'Iranian
militias'. Yet this is ultimately a simplification; for whilst the
invading PMUs are indeed ideologically-sectarian groups supported by
Iran, this does not preclude them from being simultaneously backed by
Western governments. That the Iraqi state has become largely a sectarian
Iranian proxy does not negate the existence of that state or the backing
that it receives from Western powers, and ultimately the PMUs form a
crucial part of the Iraqi state apparatus alongside their simultaneous
role as an Iranian foreign proxy. Furthermore, such descriptions of the
PMUs as more or less 'Iranian' provide deniability to Western
governments, since it can be claimed that Iran - unlike Iraq - is not a
main beneficiary of Western military support. The legal
commander-in-chief of the PMUs is the Iraqi Prime Minister, not an
Iranian general.
Whilst US support for the PMUs has largely been centred in Iraq, the
notion that the PMU brigades cease being 'Western-backed' once they
cross the border into Syria is, of course, fanciful. Nonetheless it is
noteworthy that the US has on limited occasion provided aerial support
to the PMUs inside Syria, namely in Palmyra (along with Lebanon's
Hezbollah and the PMU's Imam Ali Brigades [AR]]) and possibly - though
indeterminately - as part of pro-regime forces in Hasakah and Deir
al-Zor. In other words, the United States has provided military support
to foreign militias on Syrian territory.
Indeed, according to many anti-Assad detractors of US policy, the United
States had the clear capacity to condition its critical military support
to the Iraqi government - without which Baghdad would have likely come
under siege by ISIS in 2014 - on the understanding that it was
contingent on the non-intervention of Iraqi state-backed brigades in the
Syrian conflict. Accordingly, if the United States truly cared about the
Assad regime's criminality - or was obsessed with "regime-change", the
severely inaccurate mischaracterisation of US policy which Western
commentators such as Robert Fisk have spent years promoting
(simultaneously obfuscating a plethora of inconvenient facts, such as
the Assad regime in 2014 welcoming the military intervention by the same
US government supposedly conspiring against it - and correctly declaring
it as "aligned") its extensive military support to Iraq would have been
suspended long ago when it was clear that the PMUs were fighting for
Assad in Syria. Instead, the significant and game-changing level of
involvement of Iraqi brigades in the Syrian conflict since 2015 has
actually taken place concurrent with the US increasing its military
support to Iraq during this period. That Western governments have for
years ignored the intervention of Iraq in Syria whilst increasing
support to its armed forces is due at best to their lack of interest in
the regime's crimes, and at worst (according to many of the detractors)
a policy of active calculation.
Indeed, the capability of Iraqi PMU brigades to flock into Syria is
directly a result of the heavy US-led intervention against ISIS and
other Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq. It is within this context - the
retreat of ISIS as the thousands of US-led Coalition bombings took their
toll - that sectarian Iraqi groups proliferated into Syria. The number
of Iraqi fighters entering Syria increased pointedly, with an estimated
2013 level of between 800-2,000 Iraqi fighters multiplying to at least
20,000 by 2016. Thus the US-led support for Iraqi state forces against
their enemies inside Iraq undoubtedly facilitated the entry of many of
these same forces into Syria.
The recent capture of Mosul opens the possibility that far more Iraqi
PMU brigades will intervene in Syria, perhaps even with "official"
backing (likely encompassing significantly-escalated and coordinated
support). With recent news that the CIA has ended its "vetted arms"
program to Syrian rebels (a misunderstood role which contrary to popular
media portrayal was centred on controlling, restricting and vetoing
existing arms inflows from regional states - and by extension
restricting the scope of rebel mlitary campaigns - to ensure that the
regime was not pressured to a point of collapse), the possible US return
to a "choking" policy of rebel supplies (potentially encompassing much
tighter border policing) in conjunction with an escalated involvement by
the Iraqi government in Syria may bode ill for the Syrian
revolutionaries, unless regional rebel allies finally challenge US
diktat and bypass "Uncle Sam's" regime-preserving red lines. Contrary to
the disparaging of the Syrian revolutionary forces as either
non-existent, weak or 'extremists' (rhetoric which is noticeably
fashionable today amongst proclaimed 'anti-establishment' circles, yet
which far from being 'alternative' is in fact identical to
long-established polemic by US officials and reports by Tony Blair's
think-tank), the US subversion of the Syrian revolutionaries was because
- unlike others such as the Kurdish YPG - they were "not ready to back
US interests".
What this years-long effective Western support (be it directed or
acquiesced-to) for the Assad regime by way of the Iraqi military means
is that the 2003 invasion of Iraq - ostensibly committed in the name of
"democracy" - has in fact brought to power forces that are today crucial
in helping the Assad regime bury the genuine, grassroots demand for
democracy of 2011. Neither is this merely a retrospective truth, for the
US and UK governments continue to support Iraq despite being fully aware
of its invasion of Syria, making a mockery of 'official' condemnations
of the Assad regime.
Thus far from the useful populist fanfare of a 'Western conspiracy' to
overthrow him - the empty trope repeated by every previously
Western-collaborating Arab Spring dictator (and there is evidence that
Assad himself does not fully believe it) - Assad's real secret winning
ingredient? The past and present US-led interventions in Iraq.
--------------------------------------------------
_Part Two discusses the question as to what extent the United States
simply turned a blind eye to the role of foreign militias in Syria, or
whether this constituted part of a more calculated policy. It also
discusses the Trump administration's recent actions which have involved
some foreign pro-Assad groups in Syria, and which have opened questions
as to whether the Trump administration is shifting away from its
predecessor_'s _policy._
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