Syria, the gate of the forthcoming grand Arab 'Chaos'

The Americans turned down all proposals and assurances submitted to them by their allies. Instead, they insisted on their own position of refusing to supply the Syrian opposition with qualitative arms that could have speeded up winning the battle and bringing down the regime and thus end the Syrian war and its repercussions across the region. Their pretext was that they feared such weapons might fall in the wrong hands and turn into a curse on everybody. They must now be feeling uneasy going through their intelligence reports that provide fine details of the quantities and qualities of the weapons, including armoured vehicles, rocket launchers and even thermal missiles and fighter planes, that fell completely in the wrong hands in Mosul, Beigi and other places. Most of these weapons are intact and brand new.

Such grand catastrophe, which unfolded last Tuesday when Iraq and the region woke up to the news of the fall of the second largest Iraqi city, Mosul, in the hands of Isis, is nothing but a natural outcome of neglecting the Syrian situation throughout the past years. What comes next is graver. Iraq, as we knew of, is completely finished and so will be the entire region. The fall of Mosul may be the starting point of the end of Sykes – Picot.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Malki may try to regain control by force. The man is a professional wrong decision maker. This has been his state of affair since he succumbed to three vanities that are capable of destroying any leader. These are: sectarianism, lusting for power and craving for loot. Only one of the three would be sufficient to destroy any country. Imagine what happens when the three combine. The outcome is the Iraq that we saw last Tuesday and the Iraq that will be afterwards. I say that he will try to regain the reigns of power by force. Here he is mobilising the Iraqi people telling them to rise to arms in the wake of the collapse of an army, which he trained and equipped with U.S. sponsorship and on which he spent billions of dollars. Let’s assume that the wronged people will respond to his mobilisation call and that so will also the remnants of his army and his sectarian militias, and let’s assume he declares a new Karbalaa to divide his people officially into two separate peoples in line with “we are a people and you are a people”, that is a prescription which despots favour because it would rally people around them, but it is a prescription for the destruction of the one homeland. If he were to come out victorious, he will be victorious in a war similar to Saddam’s war against the Kurds. His war would be aimed at subduing Sunni Iraq to an objectionable occupation, rejected and intensely resisted by the Sunnis, and unacceptable to the international community. Perhaps I am in a bit of a haste regarding the latter. The international community has accepted what is happening in Syria. Yet, once Al-Malki is defeated and his army is broken and driven south, this will not be good news either because the outcome would be an Iraq that is officially divided. Another catastrophe would await the Sunnis of Iraq because ISIS is not the sort of group that is willing to share power with anyone. Those that swept through Mosul, Salahiddin and Tikrit, and perhaps by the time this article is published Samarra and Kirkuk, is not ISIS alone but other factions that partook in the “conquest”. Some even say that the forces that took part in this process included remnants of Saddam’s old troops who have regrouped and joined ISIS brought together by detestation for Al-Malki and his sectarians which has marginalised all moderate Sunni leaders. Instead of contesting these leaders in parliament, Al-Malki opted to exclude them. So, now comes those who understand his language and who seek to exclude him completely from Iraq. However, his mistakes will be paid for by all of Iraq.

The other sunni factions, tribes and politicians will reject ISIS boorishness and insolence in the aftermath of the forthcoming confrontation with Al-Malki, and even before it. We shall see heads severed and hung in public squares across towns. The governor of Ninawa Atheel Al-Nijayfi, who is not on good terms with Al-Malki, is considered by ISIS to be an apostate. The same would apply to others around him and would equally apply to the former leaders of the Sahwat (Re-awakenings) and heads of tribes and political groups. The system of governance in the eyes of ISIS is quite simple, it is not sophisticated at all. If you accept it you’ll be left in peace. But if you reject it then your head will be hung in the square. There will be no elections, no democracy and no choice. We have the Leader of the Believers and you have to listen to him and whoever deputises for him and show them absolute obedience, or else!! Of course Iraqis will eventually refuse this, just as any other people would reject oppression and tyranny. There will be a revolution. The Kurds, who too will have had enough with ISIS, may also intervene. They have indeed marched toward Kirkuk. The Turks might also be drawn into the battle. They must be concerned to see ISIS expand in their neighbourhood. The outcome will be a civil war among the Sunnis of Iraq that will finish off whatever remains after their civil wars with their Shi’ite brothers. This is a devastating prescription that will keep nothing and save nothing. Indeed, this will be a huge gate for the era of the grand Arab chaos in lieu of the “grand Arab revolution”. This will be an anarchy we opened up unto ourselves by ourselves after we failed to decisively settle the Syrian war allowing it to expand further and further stretching to Lebanon and Jordan in the form of refugees who are changing the demographic equilibrium in each of them and in the form of sectarian divisions and armed clashes in the first, the revival of Jihadist Salafist in the second, with some skirmishes along the borders. The same thing has been seen in Turkey too which has had the biggest share of refugees, the exchange of projectiles along the borders and internal tension. As for Saudi Arabia, Syria has become a training school and a recruitment filed of the third generation of Saudi Alqaeda or ISIS soldiers. These are more shrewd and much tougher than their predecessors. In Europe and America, there have been some terrorist acts, some have actually taken place while others have successfully been thwarted. As for Iraq, Al-Malki has incurred for himself and his country the biggest share of Syrian war evils.

He started as a supporter of a Ba’thist regime, which he eventually rose against when he was an activist dreaming with the justice and law state, reading and teaching the books of his mentor Muhammad Baqir Al-Sadr about the justness of Islam. But when he ascended to power he turned into a mere sectarian who clenches to power and shares the resources with his own folks and tribesmen. That is why they very rapidly, and in an unprecedented manner, accumulated so much wealth leading to the spread of corruption inside Iraq so much so that it has topped the list of corrupt states. In the meantime, the people, both Sunnis and Shi’ites, continued to suffer poverty and wretches although their country is the second richest oil country in the region. He used his election success in excluding all opponents, especially the Sunnis, in what appeared to be an obsession with vengeance. When the Tuesday disaster hit, he found only his immediate partisan supporters around him. His support for Bashar was an act of moral bankruptcy that led to the revival of Alqaeda and Sunni rage. Some of this rage was peaceful, represented in the Al-Anbar uprising and the Iraqi spring that pressed peacefully for rights by means of organising public rallies. Yet, he launched fiercely against them killing and banishing those who took part. He even borrowed from Bashar the method of barrel bombs. In the aftermath of the fall of Mosul, he called on neighbouring countries to close their borders to prevent the crossing of terrorists. He knows really well that it was his policy that rendered the borders fully open between Iraq and Syria leading to the flow of Syrian ISIS into Iraq.

This is not a conspiracy hatched by Al-Malki as some would like to believe in a bid to explain the rapid collapse of his forces, allegedly in order to resort to declaring emergency law and transform himself into a dictator. This was simply an act of mismanagement and a gamble that turned against him. Even if one were to assume this was a conspiracy, it does not really matter. For what matters is that the disaster has happened and the gate of “grand chaos” has been opened. It is time for a rapid intervention by the very few countries in the region that have not yet been hit with the “grand chaos”. I specifically mean Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

This is a translation of the article published by Al Hayat newspaper, 14 June, 2014

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.