Why Baghdad Can Never Truly Be Secure

Even if this wasn’t a deliberate ploy, the extremists would still be in these areas. Baghdad doesn’t have any absolutely clear boundaries or walls and its geographical border tends to be these rural and agricultural areas. It also means the city is connected to four different provinces through the less populated land. There are plenty of back roads and unmarked farmer’s tracks, that are not policed, connecting the provinces to the Baghdad belt and then on into the capital that are now being used by the Islamic State, or IS, group.

“There are literally forests of orchards on the outskirts of Baghdad and gunmen can hide there for months without discovery,” explains Khudair al-Khazraji, a colonel in the Iraqi military. “I have lost many of my men working on the outskirts of Baghdad – they were killed by Improvised Explosive Devices [on the road] or assassinated.”

Al-Khazraji confirms what al-Mashadani said earlier about the local population being seen as terrorist affiliates. “Militants find a lot of people in the [Sunni Muslim] community who sympathize with them,” the colonel noted.

As another member of the Iraqi military confirms, not even the US army was able to control the Baghdad belt, even though they launched several major operations here between 2006 and 2007. They did arrest dozens of extremists and also found troves of documents relating to Sunni Muslim extremist organizations like Al Qaeda, who were active in the area.

The fact that there are a lot of Sunni Muslims living in this area is no coincidence either. In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein’s Baath political party - dominated by Sunni Muslims - tried to change the demographics of these areas. They resettled Sunnis in areas where a mix of Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims had been living together for years in order to try and encourage Sunni dominance.