FLASHBACK

Why are Iraqis already worried about what is unfolding in Syria?

 

By Sidney Hey

Christmas fortuitously found me in Baghdad where, although the government is still in the hands of a political confederation of Shiites who are not very well regarded among Iraqis, at least Christians feel protected from the Takfir (Muslim Brotherhood) jihadist groups that, after the fall of Syria, are mysteriously re-emerging with great force in the desert of Al Ambar province and all of north-western Iraq.

Despite this, my stay was welcomed by the friendship of a family cultivated during the occupation, who, in addition to losing two of their sons and a brother accused of being ‘insurgent sympathisers’, gave me shelter for one night as we fled from the US military when they raided the Sadr City neighbourhood in 2007. 

Although some time has passed since then, Baghdadis are alert to what is happening in Syria and for some, especially those who know very well how the invaders of 2003 operated, they are the same creators of ‘Daesh’ (Islamic State) and their plan to install a Caliphate to destroy the nation states. Today they are already operating in Damascus using the same deceptive formula of fomenting ‘sectarian strife’. To find out more, I met somewhere in Baghdad with old survivors of the Sunni ‘Rafidain’ organisation, resistance fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein and the Baath party (including Shiites) who still -difficult as it may seem- survive under cover amid a hostile Status Quo of a government controlled from the shadows by the Americans and the Iranians.

The Iraqi resistance had to endure a constant and bloody work of degradation and corruption in which money was perhaps the most effective means used by the Anglo-Americans to achieve this. The creation of those Sunni tribal groups of the ‘Sunrise Assemblies’ armed to the teeth, trained by the Americans to fight the ‘Moqawama’ was one of the ways.

Even so, they are not alone, as there is an important fringe of Shiite resistance organisations from back then who, after joining forces to fight Daesh in 2014, after disavowing their shameful collusion with Washington, are in constant conflict with a government that is not only weak, but also highly corrupt and disloyal to the Islamic cause.

But beyond political disputes, or over who are the real resisters to the then occupation and who best represent it in the present circumstances, there was never any doubt about who the enemy is, and today that common enemy is closer than ever, just a few kilometres from their borders.  They are the same ones who among thousands of others murdered Qassem Soleimani and Mahdi Muhandis and are coming for more Arab-Islamic blood. Today, as never before, the syndrome of terror established by the Anglo-Americans and their partners in the neighbouring country is lurking and they know that the Al Sudani government is no guarantee of anything.

This was stated by one of my interlocutors named Ibrahim, a veteran element of a faction of the Nakshaiabandi Army who managed to slip away from the assassination squads in the service of Al Maliki and the CIA, when he assured me that ‘what these guys did in Baghdad in the first years of occupation, they have started to do in Syria. You will see Al Assad resistance groups sprouting up everywhere, ambushing and killing collaborationist officials, They will blow up markets and public buildings, but in many cases they will just be hoaxes set up by the CIA.

A similar experience was shared by the man whose nickname is ‘Al Kader’, who until 2017 was a member of the ‘Asaib Aleh Alq’ (or the Order of the Upright Men) shia group who operated in Karbala and Basrah during the Anglo-American occupation. Kader said: ‘The British had placed collaborationist officials who served only them in order to build what is ruling Iraq today. We knew that British military intelligence was coordinating everything so that fake resistance groups could bring in cars and armed trucks to blow up public places to create situations of anger like the blowing up of the dome of the Samarra Mosque in 2007.

My curiosity compelled me to ask, ‘How can you be sure that this will happen? To which he replied without hesitation, ‘Haven't you heard about the ambushes in Damascus, Aleppo and the last one in Tartous where ten transition officials were killed? The tactics employed are very similar to the ones we used in the beginning until we started to notice that the invaders were imitating our actions, but to kill civilians’. He went on to say:

‘As then, today the CIA, MI6, Ottoman MIT and even the Zionists are regrouping men, delivering weapons and explosives to help them assault the ‘Al Qaeda’ usurpers they themselves helped take Damascus.’

I do not need to make enquiries to contrast these stories, as they have experienced them first hand and know best what the consequences may be from now on in neighbouring Syria. It is very clear that what they explain is a sinister power game that will turn Syria into a bloody puzzle where security and stability will be a thing of the past, even if the same people who encircled it economically allow it to reopen its trade routes.