Middle East: What's happening in Iraq?

Image credits: Jayel Aheram

In her final column for the term, Online Features Columnist Thea Osborne discusses the current dire state of affairs left behind in Iraq.

Sectarian violence within Iraq is becoming an almost daily event, to the extent where news channels seem to have become desensitised to the latest car bomb or suicide attack. Violence has reached the worst levels it has been in years; the monthly death toll did drop in November but it is still terrifyingly high with 659 dead, at least 80 per cent of whom were civilians. 7,150 civilians have been killed since January this year, the highest annual toll since 2008. On Sunday at least 39 people were reported to have been killed by over nine explosions in and around Baghdad, predominantly in Shia Muslim areas. The bombs targeted crowded commercial areas and marketplaces. The roots of the violence are based along complex sectarian divides and rivalries and are slowly turning the whole of Iraq into a violent crisis zone with little clear leadership and even less everyday safety.

The three largest demographics within Iraq are Arab Sunnis, Arab Shia and the Kurds; each is desperate to stake a claim to the future Iraq and ensure that their interests are considered. The Kurds in the north were brutally oppressed under Saddam Hussein and are now determined to settle for little less than their own autonomous state. The rivalry between the Shia and Sunni is what has been the cause of the majority of the recent violence within the country. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Muslim and despite only making up 35 per cent of the population favoured fellow Sunnis over the majority Shia population. Perhaps understandably there has been a lot of backlash from the previously suppressed Shia majority since his downfall. This has then created a vicious cycle of attack and counter-attack which has reached particularly awful heights in the last year. The latest ongoing wave of violence started as a response to a crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in April and has reached heights only previously seen when the country teetered on the brinks of civil war in 2007.

The Shia-led Iraqi government is under pressure to restore control and is attempting to bring in new safety measures in order to curtail the rising violence as Iraqi citizens are increasingly concerned that it could spill over into a full blown sectarian conflict. Bombings in crowded areas, particularly cafés, bus stations and restaurants have become part of everyday life – citizens are feeling increasingly unsafe as more and more civilians are randomly targeted. At the beginning of the year attacks were generally focused upon security and military targets but they have become increasingly unpredictable. Responsibility is usually unclaimed for attacks but different methods tend to indicate different groups; suicide bombings are generally being carried out by Al-Qaeda associates and roadside bombings by Shia extremists. Those carrying out the violence and sanctioning such violent methods are clearly small minorities of the Iraqi population but they are managing to slowly drag the entire country back in time to the more brutal times of the Shia-Sunni violence in 2006 and 2007.

Image credits: The U.S. Army

It is clear and imminent that whether the world is noticing or not, Iraq is sliding dangerously close to civil war. Government measures, such as the increasing use of sniffer dogs that can smell out car bombs and large helium balloons over Baghdad which use surveillance cameras to track traffic, are generally met with scepticism by the population. The only hope is that the majority of the country is so desperate for peace and the end of sectarian violence that the violence might fizzle out, however, at the moment, it seems to be never-ending.

Thea Osborne, Online Features Columnist

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Syria: doing nothing is a mistake

Crowds in Syria
Image credits: FreedomHouse

From on the ground in Amman, Jordan, Gareth Browne explains why he is pro-intervention in Syria.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

With a track record in the Middle East such as that of the United States, the United Kingdom and the West in general, it is not beyond the realm of comprehension that governments have to give serious thought to intervening in Syria. Not least of the considerations are public opinion and concerns about the possibility of provoking a return attack.

However Syria is not Iraq. Nor is it Afghanistan and I wish that our governments will not allow the risk of bad public relations to stop them from intervening and doing as our morality compels us. To act so late is regrettable, but to not act at all is indefensible.

For the past few years, a massacre has been allowed to take place. The Syrian regime has murdered and displaced hundreds of thousands of innocent people and my nation has shamefully stood back and watched. We are so paralyzed by the fear of failure and the hard lessons learnt in Iraq and Afghanistan that we believe if we do nothing then we can do no wrong. This is a fallacy; a sickening policy of isolationism which allows innocent Syrians, many of whom share our values, to be slaughtered like animals. How can we justify our position on the UN Security Council or indeed being a free and progressive nation if we do not defend the innocent against such malice?

There are those who will make the excuse that we will be supporting terrorists and Al-Qaeda, which is a lazy and ill-conceived assumption. No one denies that there are distasteful elements involved in fighting the regime but to suggest that the opposition in its entirety is made up of these zealots is wrong. There are many groups fighting for a democratic and secular Syria and we have no reason to believe that they are cooperating with Islamist militants; in fact, several top commanders of the Free Syria Army have publicly come out against groups like Jabhat Al-Nusra.

These groups exist both alone and as part of the Syrian National Council but they do not get the attention or publicity they deserve. The  tragic irony of the situation, for those that subscribe to this idea, is that the longer the international community does nothing and allows the situation to deteriorate the only groups gaining strength are the Assad regime and those groups who are backed by Al-Qaeda. In some parts of the country, for example Idlib and Aleppo, an absence of governmental control has allowed very organised and opportunistic Al-Qaeda groups to step in. They provide medicine, food and weapons, all of which are required whilst the assistance of the West remains non-existent. The longer the status quo continues, the more opportunities like this spring up for Al-Qaeda, and the more the UK and other Western nations should be concerned.

This oft-discussed “red line” regarding the use of chemical weapons was never necessary for action in Syria. Indeed, what sort of message does it send out if we only feel compelled to act after chemical weapons are used – that regimes are free to massacre their own citizens provided that they only use conventional weapons? Britain must lead the international community decisively, not to spread democracy or police the world, not to combat Iran and curb their potential usage of these weapons but to stop a massacre, and to prevent the implosion of a beautiful nation by bringing to a halt the ethnic cleansing taking place against the Kurds. We must fight the evil wherever it may be, whether within the regime or the opposition groups.

Gareth Browne