Why Baghdad Can Never Truly Be Secure

“The construction of a security fence in the suburbs would reduce the amount of forces we need there and can be used in fighting the IS group,” Saad Maan, spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command, told NIQASH. “The security fence will also be equipped with video cameras so that extremists can’t use the back roads there to transport bombs into the city. There are enough security forces out [in the Baghdad belt],” Maan concluded. “There are occasional infiltrations but on the whole things are under control.”

Really the biggest problem in the Baghdad belt is the same as the country’s biggest problem: Sectarian antipathy. The Sunni Muslim locals don’t trust the Shiite Muslim security forces and vice versa. More local security forces – that is, those native to the Sunni Muslim neighbourhoods – are not seen as trustworthy as some of them are known to have collaborated with the IS group.

Some Shiite Muslim militias in these areas have managed to keep areas secure but they have achieved this mostly by using force. There have also been injustices and violations in the area – which is why the security that is imposed can only ever be temporary. As soon as the security forces with draw – as some of them did last month when the Iraqi government stopped paying their salaries – then the extremist groups reappear.