Opinion Taking aim at Baghdad

After seizing the cities of Mosul and Tikrit to the north, the Islamist militants led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) — the successor to al-Qaeda in Iraq — have advanced to Diyala province in the east, near the border with Iran. They are closing in on the capital Baghdad, pushing along the Tigris River Valley, the populated spine of Iraq. The ISIS has exploited the dispute between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government and Iraq’s Sunni minority to gain local Sunni support and is winning the psychological battle against state forces witnessing desertion and abandonment of posts. Led by the shadowy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS had already overrun Ramadi and Fallujah before taking Mosul — a major political and economic centre and Iraq’s gateway to Syria and Turkey — in its greatest success so far.

If the ISIS consolidates its hold on Mosul, its ambition of creating an Islamist emirate in eastern Syria and western Iraq would almost be met, plunging an unstable Middle East into greater turmoil and deepening the Shia-Sunni conflict that has become its primary faultline. Modern Iraq was born as a sectarian cauldron a century ago, when the British demarcated its borders, disregarding ethnicities, imposing a Sunni Hashemite monarchy on the Shia majority and the Kurds. The 2003 US-led invasion widened the sectarian divide, as the Sunni minority — dominant under Saddam Hussein — faced a new Shia triumphalism encouraged by a Shia Iran emboldened by Iraq’s weakening. As Sunnis came to be increasingly victimised by security forces after the US withdrawal in 2011, against the backdrop of the state’s socio-economic failure and an escalating civilian death toll, Sunni areas became fertile recruiting ground for the ISIS.

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Even as US President Barack Obama contemplates air strikes, Iran has reportedly deployed units from its Revolutionary Guards to help al-Maliki’s government fight the ISIS. This may be a rare alignment of US and Iranian interests, but Tehran’s action could escalate Iraq’s crisis into a regional conflict. Baghdad’s priority should be securing the capital and oil infrastructure. It can then push back against the ISIS. But to make long-term gains, al-Maliki will have to reach out to the security forces of the autonomous Kurds. He will also have to work towards a representative social coalition to run the country.