ISIL, or Daesh as the Iraqis and French government call them, face massive challenges in these regions, although private security is still necessary for most business ventures in the south, in large part due to the local economic situation there. So ISIL is really a problem in the centre of Iraq. Can they be pushed back, away from the heart of Iraq’s government? Arguably, they already have been.
Recall the second half of 2006. Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIL, had bombed the Holy Al Askari shrine in Samarra, setting off a calamitous round of violence on top of what had already been a worsening situation since 2003.
The US Marines had produced a classified report saying that Anbar, one of two vital provinces bordering Syria, was effectively beyond government of Iraq control-- a situation not dissimilar to what we see today.
Wave after wave of suicide car bomb attacks were slamming into the capital, while the south of Iraq was largely under the control of militias. Small rural towns outlying Baghdad became hellish scenes of ongoing violence. Today, the Shi’a militias are part of a political process, run by parties that for the most part publicly praise Western investment--a very different situation to 2006.
In 2006 the US government assessment was bleak: a bipartisan Congressional panel, The Iraq Study Group, declared that Iraq was effectively a lost cause. The Iraqi economy, which had been crawling along since 2003 still struggled to increase oil exports and escape the legacy of two decades of crippling sanctions and war.
In fact, today’s tremendous expansion of Iraq’s energy sector was far from realised in 2006, with insurgent attacks hampering development. The huge oil licensing rounds that would later come were 3 years away. If there was any good news at all, it was simply that most of Iraq’s colossal Saddam era debt had been cancelled. Today, while there is a thriving energy sector, the economic challenge is an ongoing battle against rentierism. But that is far from insurmountable, and something Iraq has been taking steps towards for several years.
So who would have been justified in having any hope in Iraq in 2006?
Against the odds, there was hope, and the turnaround was remarkably quick. Of course, the story of this success is largely down to the presence of an extra 30,000 US troops, peaking at 170,000 in 2007, the fabled “surge”.
Also critical to vanquishing al Qaeda was a change in US strategy on the ground, involving rapid tempo special forces operations and the formalisation of the “Sahwa,” the Iraqi Sunni tribes who turned against al Qaeda. This localised resistance in al Qaeda’s back yard, coupled with American and Iraqi security operations, decimated the terrorist organisation.
This allowed the Iraqi army to buy more time and develop into a fighting force. Yes, you read that right--a fighting force. Leave aside the reports of the Iraqi army divisions that crumbled in Mosul in June and consider that behind the headlines, the Iraqi 5th, 7th, 9th, 6th and 17th divisions have held up in the face of the ISIS onslaught, while to the north an array of Kurdish groups have given ISIS a bloody nose in a number of battles. In the almost Darwinian struggle of modern war, these units will evolve combat proficiency.
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