ISIS Attacks Surge in Iraq Amid
Debate on U.S. Troop Levels
The growing pressure on the
United States to reduce its military presence in Iraq comes as strikes by the
Islamic State are on the rise.
Iraqi and American army
officers in Nineveh, Iraq, in March, at a ceremony marking a drawdown of
coalition troops in the area.Credit...Abdullah Rashid/Reuters
By Alissa J.
Rubin, Lara Jakes and Eric Schmitt
June 10, 2020
MAKESHIFA, Iraq — The
assailants came at dusk, creeping on foot through the dusty palm groves near
the Tigris River, armed only with a rocket-propelled grenade, a light machine
gun and Kalashnikovs. They had laid roadside bombs to kill anyone who rushed to
help the unsuspecting local guards, who were in their sights.
When the attack on the village
last month was over, nine members of a Sunni tribe that had opposed the Islamic
State were dead and four were wounded, one of them nearly burned to death.
This is the Islamic State in
Iraq in 2020: low-tech, low-cost, rural, but still lethal. And while it has not
carried out attacks on the scale that it did a few years ago, the number of
attacks has begun to grow again.
As American and Iraqi
negotiators begin a new round of strategic talks on Thursday, the question of
how to respond to the Islamic State’s quiet resurgence — and how much American
help is required to do so — will be at the center of the discussion.
There are currently about 5,200
American troops in Iraq, whose main missions are counterterrorism and training
Iraqi forces.
The Trump administration, which
sees the American presence as crucial for tamping down the resurgence of ISIS
and as a bulwark against Iranian power in Iraq, wants to keep a substantial
force there.
“We’re going to continue to
maintain forces as long as the Iraqi government is willing to have U.S. and
coalition forces present in the country until the enduring defeat of Daesh is
accomplished, and it’s not yet accomplished,” James F. Jeffrey, the American
special envoy to the region, said in a briefing on Friday, using the Arabic
acronym for ISIS. “That’s our policy.”
But there has been pressure on
both sides to reduce the American military presence.
Prime Minister Mustafa
al-Kadhimi meeting senior army officers in Kirkuk last week. Iraq says its
military can fight ISIS on the ground, but needs American help with
reconnaissance and air support. Credit...Iraqi Prime Mininster Office/EPA, via
Shutterstock
Congress has increasingly
questioned the continued American troop presence in Iraq.
The Pentagon is reluctant to
keep more than the absolute minimum of troops there because they have been
attacked by Iranian-backed militias. An attack on an Iraqi base in
March killed three soldiers of the American-led military coalition in
Iraq, two of them Americans, and wounded 14.
Since then, the military has
consolidated its troops on fewer bases. Separately, the training mission has
been suspended for the last few months because of concerns about the
coronavirus.
Pentagon officials believe they
can do the job with roughly half the current American force and have plans to
reduce the number of troops in Iraq to 2,500 to 3,000, but have no fixed
numbers or timetable. Other members of the 29-country American-led military
coalition have already cut their numbers in half, to about 1,200 troops,
because of the coronavirus pandemic.
On the Iraqi side, the
country’s Parliament, furious over the American airstrikes in Iraq
that killed an Iranian military leader and several Iraqi officials,
passed a resolution in January demanding the withdrawal of American forces.
On Monday, the influential
nationalist Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, called on the United States to
withdraw and end its “aggressive and highhanded behavior toward the world.”
The Iraqi government has not
acted on the parliamentary resolution, which was nonbinding, and the Iraqi
military is reluctant to have the American troops leave altogether. While the
Iraqis say they can do the fighting on the ground themselves, they say they
still need help in reconnaissance, air support and training.
American soldiers on a
reconnaissance patrol in western Iraq in 2018, after the Islamic State was
pushed out.Credit...Susannah George/Associated Press
The talks starting Thursday,
which last occurred in 2018, will touch on “all strategic issues between our
two countries,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in announcing them in
April, including the presence of the American forces and “how best to support
an independent and sovereign Iraq.”
But hovering over the
discussion is a third country, Iran, which wields powerful
influence in Iraq that the United States wants to to see reduced.
The United States would like to
see diminished economic ties between Iraq and Iran, and less Iranian influence
over the Iraqi security forces, while Iraq would like stronger guarantees that
the United States will not provoke a conflict with Iran on Iraqi soil.
The two countries came
perilously close to war after the American airstrike that killed Maj. General
Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, at the Baghdad airport
in January.
In addition to discussion of
the American military presence, the strategic talks, which will be conducted
online and are expected to continue for several months, will also cover energy
and the economy.
The Americans want to help
expand Iraq’s oil and gas industry, at least partly to help wean Iraq off
Iranian energy. Iraq, which has the world’s fifth-largest proven crude oil
reserves, often relies on Iran for gas and electricity.
The Iraqi purchases help
undermine the American sanctions, which are aimed at placing “maximum pressure”
on Iran to force it to accept a new nuclear agreement and meet other American
demands.
A priority for all three
countries is eradicating the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group that at its
peak controlled territory the size of Britain straddling Iraq and Syria.
A four-year battle by a
combination of American, Kurdish and Iranian-backed forces drove
ISIS from the territory, leading President Trump to declare victory over
the group last year. The battlefield losses decimated its command and control
and sharply reduced its attacks in Iraq and Syria.
But the attacks began to
rebound over the last year and have increased steadily since the middle of
2019, according to data compiled by Michael Knights and Alex Almeida
of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“The U.S. is looking in the
wrong place if they are looking for the attacks we saw in 2014, if they are
looking for mass casualties in cities, but the fact that ISIS hasn’t done that
is a choice,” Mr. Knights said. In addition to small-scale attacks, ISIS is
“trying to create rural bastions,” he said.
Mr. Jeffrey, the American
special envoy to the region, agreed that the Islamic State “remains a resilient
and significant threat.”
“Given the history of ISIS,
also given the history of the organization that spawned ISIS initially, Al
Qaeda with 9/11, everybody should be careful and cautious and on their guard to
simply write off a terrorist movement with the pedigree of ISIS,” he told
reporters in Washington last week.
The aftermath of fierce
fighting between Iraqi special forces and the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, in
2017.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
The Islamic State is
re-establishing itself in the largely Sunni areas where it began 17 years ago,
in the provinces of Salahuddin, Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk and Nineveh.
The first targets were remote
police or militia checkpoints and targeted killings of low-level local
officials who refused to cooperate with ISIS demands. As Iraqi security forces
were diverted to help enforce curfews and lockdowns to control the coronavirus
this year, the Islamic State gained more freedom to operate.
Perhaps more than other Iraqis,
those living in areas where the Islamic State is re-establishing itself want
the American military to stay.
Sheikh Shaalan al-Karim, a
former member of Parliament and a senior figure in the tribe that was attacked
by ISIS in the village of Makeshifa last month, says that the Iraqi government
cannot combat ISIS alone.
He said families with ties to
the Islamic State who had been banned from returning were paying bribes to come
back to their homes in the area.
But the biggest problem, he
said, is how Sunni Muslims, the minority religious group in Iraq, are treated
by the Shiite-dominated government.
The battle against ISIS
devastated many Sunni areas. Sons and brothers of ISIS fighters who were killed
or imprisoned are looking for revenge. Sunni families who were marginally
supportive of the Islamic State are often treated with suspicion, have trouble
getting jobs and some then are drawn back to ISIS for financial reasons.
Much of the policing in Sheikh
al-Karim’s Sunni area of Salahuddin Province is overseen by Shiite militias.
“If we put ISIS and the
militias on a scale,” he said, “they are the same because ISIS kills and steals
and blows up innocent people, and in return the militias do the same thing.
ISIS has the Sunni cover and the militias have the Shiite cover.
“The American presence in Iraq
is very important, and not only in these areas but for the whole of Iraq, and
as for Salahuddin Province we hope for the American presence today, not
tomorrow.”
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