Musings on the Islamic State

By Ashwath Komath

Musings on the Islamic State talks about the nuances of the fight against the ISIS and provides analysis of the lesser known stories which provide hints to the big picture. The book attempts to correct the oversimplification of the ISIS by the media and provides context to the conditions in which it grew and became successful. Several smaller factors, some very inconsequential at the face of it, may influence the role of the group in a big way.

In 30 essays, a lot of such smaller details, many of which were left out in the hype and propaganda of all sides, come out and show us a much better understanding of what is really happening on the ground and how that would influence the fight against the deadly group.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashwath Komath
• Release date: Jul 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310220883

Book preview

Maliki's sins

Nouri Al Maliki came to power in Iraq with the help of the Bush administration. It is said that Bush had tried to personally coach Maliki in his initial days as president of Iraq in leadership, but clearly America picked the wrong horse. Maliki did not only turn out to be an absolutely inept leader, but also came back and worked against American interests by courting Iran and increasing their influence in Iraqi politics.

Though he was elected as the leader of a sovereign nation, Maliki couldn't get his mind beyond primitive regional and sectarian politics. Of course, it would be rather foolhardy to blame the rise of the ISIS and Sunni discontent with the Iraqi state as only Maliki's fault, because there are a lot of deeper issues in Iraqi society and identity, and it didn't start with Maliki. 

But when Maliki inherited the leadership of the state, he decided to do nothing to improve the situation. He could never make the transition to statesman because he lacked leadership and the ability to make broad compromises and secure support beyond his traditional Shia constituency, which fortunately for him constituted the majority of the country. 

His anti-Sunni policies included imprisoning Sunni political opponents, denying Sunnis economic opportunities and most importantly ensuring that the Iraqi Army would firmly remain in Shia hands. 

Inept as he was in statecraft, Maliki followed in the footsteps of Muammar Gaddafi when he weakened the army and made it unprofessional to stave off a coup d'etat. Iraq is no stranger to coups. Its history has seen power flow to the Baathists from the 1968 coup. His administration replaced able Sunni leaders in the army with Shiites. It didn't matter to him that a well-integrated army which reflected the demographics of Iraq could play a huge role in long-term nation building. The new army didn't fare any better in terms of its protection. 

When ISIS took over cities in Iraq, we hear of stories where soldiers numbering 30,000 were driven out by an ISIS force of merely 7,000. This is a glaring example of the state of decay in the Iraqi army and police. It was being more and more corrupt by the day. Rather than acting as an institution of national-building, Maliki used the police and the Army to hound Sunnis and alienate them further. 

Maliki turns into a Shia Saddam Hussein and wonders why people don't like him. 

There is nothing surprising about hearing of Sunni tribes aligning with the ISIS. After all, how bad could the ISIS be for the Sunni tribes? Baghdad was continuously hounding and punishing them, the government held back goods and services from reaching Sunni areas and were denying them the opportunities entitled to them because of their sect. 

Besides, where would they go when the government was denying opportunities to Sunnis, rendering many unemployed and discontented? They would naturally look at the ISIS to join them as volunteers and also to give the Shia enemy some payback. 

Loretta Napoleoni in her book The Islamist Phoenix talks about how ISIS established platforms for the delivery of goods and services for the areas which they controlled. ISIS came and showed that a functioning government could be formed in the place of the non-existent Iraqi state. It filled that void and kept the Shiite controlled army from coming and harassing them and naturally they decided to support the ISIS. The was after all, the larger picture as far as ISIS was concerned. Their quest for legitimacy included the formation of state like structures that could take over territory which they wanted to hold. 

Maliki's incompetence to keep the state together was so deep, that at the end it was the Shia politicians of Iraq calling for his resignation. The ISIS was at the gates of Baghdad and everyone understood that it was time for him to leave. He could do nothing to prevent the ISIS from gaining more territory and he was still stuck at a sectarian agenda. It was necessary for Iraq to mobilize everybody including the Sunnis and the Kurds, and Maliki had annoyed everybody. There was no surviving the ISIS onslaught without Maliki gone. 

Maliki continued the blood feud that has been the largest sorrow of the Islamic world because he was an incompetent and inept leader who wanted revenge more than he wanted to have a well-functioning state. He deceived the Americans into trusting that he would bring consensus, but in hindsight, America didn't act on the knowledge that he was turning into a dictator and undermining their own interests. Their failure to highlight his failings as a leader with the fear of embarrassment because of their initial endorsement also had a role to play in the degradation of the Iraqi state as an institution and ultimately the dominance of the ISIS. 

The Degradation of the Iraqi Army

The tales from Mosul where 30,000 Iraqi troops were driven off by a mere 7,000 ISIS fighters was perhaps one of the most shocking statistics that has come out from the war against ISIS. What is more surprising is the fact that the Iraqi Army had artillery, armor and many other weapons that the ISIS didn't have. So despite being over four times more than ISIS in terms of numbers and also having had heavy weaponry, the Iraqi army was pushed back and decimated. Several soldiers were caught by the ISIS and then subsequently executed as well. This doesn't show the superiority of the ISIS, but the failure of the Iraqi Army in trying to keep the ISIS at bay. 

So how did it come to this pathetic state?

The decay of the Iraqi Army was started a lot earlier than just now. It was a systemic decay and not a sudden one. A lot of it can be attributed to Nouri Al Maliki and his rule. He was always thinking about the various conspiracy theories against him about how the Baath party would come to de-throne him through loyalist infiltration into the Army, setting of a coup d'etat. As a result, he made some institutional changes into the army, which turned it into a corrupt and impotent force. 

His view that every Sunni was a closet Baathist was perhaps the most damaging of all. His promotion of many Shia officers over more competent Sunni officers was the start of the death of professionalism in the Iraqi Army. When the leadership is incompetent, it is hard for them to inculcate better practices or show innovation. Besides, it can be reasoned that with their sect becoming a criteria for promotion and benefits, Shia officers probably did become more complacent in trying to create a more professional force. This started the cycle of disillusionment and insubordination. 

The irony of this is the fact that Maliki didn't learn a thing from the American mistakes in 2003 with the Coalition Provisional Authority deciding to disband the Iraqi Army through Order 2. This created the bloody insurgency which America fought for many years and lost so many of its troops to. Had America been more wise with this policy, it probably would have avoided a lot of bloodshed. Maliki didn't learn a thing from this. If he had, he would have known the benefits of trying to create a more inclusive and professional military. 

He did exactly what Gaddafi did with his army for precisely the same reasons. How does one explain a scenario where an army, trained and equipped by the Americans in their time in Iraq, couldn't respond to this threat in time and lost at the face of it? 

Endemic corruption in the Iraqi Army added to the growing degeneration of the Army. Often, commanding officers would allow soldiers to be absent in exchange for a portion of his salary. There were other corrupt practices as well, such as selling fuel in the black market and even pocketing money from food rations to the soldiers. This creates a real shortage of manpower, while on paper it would be fully staffed. At the same time, the discipline dynamic is adversely affected where subordinates lose their respect for their superiors and insubordination would be prevalent. Given that this is something that happens in almost every division of the Iraqi Army, this is a serious challenge. 

Apart from the lack of self-respect and dignity to the soldier, the systematic purging of Sunnis for a personal agenda combined with the lack of solidarity drove so many Iraqi soldiers to desert the army and flee the city, leaving its residents to the mercy of the ISIS. They left everything behind, and this shows that where there is no discipline and the fact that the soldiers didn't believe in the agenda of the President, it was only a matter of time before a desertion of such magnitude would take place.

Maliki also retained control over the Special Forces of the Iraqi army. This almost replicated the Republican Guard of the Saddam Hussein era. These forces were routinely used to intimidate political opponents and crush rebellion than be used for more important tasks, like counter-terrorism when ISIS was flourishing in the chaos of Syria. 

So in effect, the hasty retreat of 30,000 soldiers in the face of a threat was just a consequence of years of neglect and decay. In its attempt to be coup-proof, the Iraqi army lost its competitive edge, allowing it to be easily intimidated by the likes of the ISIS. 

Unfortunately, this is the story of many Arab armies who suffer from advancing and improving themselves in the face of new threats and the interests of their leaders to be coup-proof. The military is the institution tasked to protecting the country but at the same time is distrusted from doing so. This has translated into low levels of professionalism, a large divide between subordinates and superiors, constant distrust between political leaders and