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By John Lee.

The Provincial Council of Najaf has reportedly decided to boycott Saudi Arabian merchandise because of what it describes as Riyadh's support for sectarian and terrorist groups fighting in Iraq.

The Media Director of Najaf's Provincial Council told AIN:

"The merchants who will violate this decision will be punished after the period given to them to sell the current stored Saudi goods."

(Source: FARS)

(Picture: Imam Ali Mosque, Najaf)

By Padraig O'Hannelly.

Earlier this week, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud pledged $500 million of humanitarian aid from Saudi Arabia to the Iraqi people, to be administered by the United Nations.

This could be a very significant move, given that relations between Iraq and its powerful and wealthy neighbour have been strained for many years.

As recently as March, the Iraqi prime minister accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of effectively declaring war on his country by funding Sunni fighters in Anbar province.

And while Saudi Arabia denies any such funding, it is generally believed that wealthy individuals in the country are a key source of funding for insurgents, including ISIS.

This development can only serve to improve relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and is to be welcomed.

(Flag image via Shutterstock)

By John Lee.

An official source at the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has ordered  $500 million of humanitarian aid for Iraqi people affected by the recent tragic events, including displaced people, regardless of their religious, doctrinal or ethnic affiliations.

The United Nations Secretary General has been informed of this aid which will be provided through the United Nations organizations for the Iraqi people only.

(Source: SPA)

By Mustafa al-Kadhimi for Al-Monitor. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

Ayad Allawi, the former Iraqi prime minister and leader of the Iraqi Nationalist ("Wataniya") Party, blamed the Iraqi government for policies that have allowed it to be "defeated by a bunch of dwarfs and killers as it sought outsiders’ help," instead of drawing on the "strength from its honorable people, from the tribes, army officers, dignitaries and politicians."

Allawi, in an interview with Al-Monitor via telephone and email from Amman, said that protests in Anbar province "have been met with repression and intimidation instead of [the government] adopting some of their demands by dealing with them morally and through a national dialogue." He described the protests as "initially peaceful, constitutional."

Allawi said, "The valiant Iraqi army has nothing to fight for. This brave army has lost its identity and its role. It doesn’t know whether it is fighting for the country or fighting for the sect or for the person or for the party."

The former prime minister, whose party gained 21 seats in the Council of Representatives during the April 30 elections, said US policy in Iraq is "without a compass" while Russian influence is growing, "a crescent stretching from the Crimea [Peninsula] and the Black Sea through Iran, Iraq, Syria and part of Lebanon."

The text of the full interview follows:

Al-Monitor: You suggested a road map to resolve the current crisis. What is this map?

Allawi: The problem doesn’t lie in just putting in new faces, although this is important. Perhaps more important, regarding how to get out of the impasse and the causes that led to it, is this map, which employs two axes: goals and mechanisms.

The essence of the goals are an inclusive political process without discrimination, quotas, exclusion or elimination — except for terrorists and those who steal public money; then achieving national reconciliation immediately; then building the institutions of a state that is professional and able to perform its duties away from regionalism, starting with internal security, the armed forces and the judiciary and its institutions.

By Andrew Parasiliti for Al-Monitor. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

Iraq’s ambassador to US: war with ISIS 'acid test' of US-Iraq ties

Iraq’s ambassador to the United States said June 26 that his country’s preference is to rely on US military assistance to battle the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Asked about reports of Iranian drone flights and provisions of military equipment to Iraq, as well as Syrian airstrikes on ISIS forces inside Iraq, Ambassador Lukman Faily, who met with Al-Monitor at his office in Washington, said that if US military aid is not forthcoming, “we will not be in a position to choose our partners and whoever is available to help us in our survival war, then we will take that.”

Faily, who was in Baghdad for US Secretary of State John Kerry’s meetings with Iraqi leaders this past week, said many Iraqis are asking if the United States will “support a democratically elected government in this war of aggression by an international terrorist organization.”

Iraq’s ambassador, who was born in Baghdad and completed the April 2014 Boston marathon, said that Baghdad is desperate for air support in its battle with ISIS.

“Any air supremacy support provided to Iraq will surely have a significant effect. That to us is a key game changer,” Faily said.

“We have had offers from the Syrians before and we declined them,” he said. “But it seems that the support that we sought from the US is not coming in a timely manner to deal with our urgency, which is more or less putting us in an uncomfortable position in seeking support from whoever is available on the ground.”

Faily expressed hope that Iraq’s neighbors could rally to provide “unusual” support in this time of crisis in Iraq.

By Mark DeWeaver.

While it has long been assumed that ISIS gets most of its money from donors in the Gulf, recently declassified documents suggest otherwise.

Researchers at the RAND Corporation found that donations actually accounted for less than 5% of the group’s funding during the period from 2005 to 2010. (See this article.)

The city of Mosul, rather than Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, turns out to have been, as one researcher put it, “the area that was keeping the group afloat”—through extortion rackets, kidnapping, and robbery.

Following the fall of the city on June 10, it’s hard to see how this can continue to be the case. Out of a population of 1.8 million, the BBC has reported that 500,000 have fled. Presumably the wealthiest residents will not be returning any time soon. It is also unclear how Mosul’s remaining state employees are going to be paid. Obviously it won’t be possible to extort money from businesses without customers or collect ransoms from people who can’t afford to leave town. You can’t get blood from a stone after all.

It’s not even clear that ISIS could have stolen as much US$ 420 million from the Mosul branch of the Central Bank of Iraq (or, in some accounts, from a combination of the CBI and private banks). While this figure has been widely reported in the media, some analysts have dismissed it as wildly exaggerated.

In any case, looting can be only a short-term source of funds. Once the city’s homes and businesses have been stripped of cash and salable assets, this bonanza will come to an end as well.

ISIS apparently had a pretty good thing going in Mosul, where it could help itself to a share of the economy of one of Iraq’s largest cities with all but complete impunity. Once this golden goose has stopped laying, I wonder if they won’t end up concluding that they should have left well enough alone.

By John Cookson. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

US Secretary of State John Kerry's whistle-stop swing through the Middle East and Europe will likely include a meeting this week with Iraq's embattled caretaker prime-minister Nouri al-Maliki.

At the Baghdad summit we can expect Secretary Kerry to again hammer home Washington's demand that the Iraqi premier form an inclusive government of national unity with Sunni politicians given prominent roles. The top US official will also seek assurance that the 300 American military advisers being sent to shore up Iraq's military are immune from prosecution on Iraqi soil.

In my opinion Secretary Kerry's visit to Baghdad is almost certainly mission impossible, as Al-Maliki is not likely to relax his hard-line stance on either issue.

On Sunni inclusiveness Washington has made the same impassioned plea for years and Al-Maliki has ignored it, even as unrest raged in Al-Anbar and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned Iraq was facing disaster. It was a high-risk political gamble by Al-Maliki, but the recent general election result shows millions of Iraqis supported him and endorsed his policies.

On the question of whether 300 advisers will not be tried in Iraq if they commit crimes; again Al-Maliki is unlikely to U-turn on his consistent policy of non-immunity, especially as few in Baghdad can forget how 4 American Blackwater security guards, working for the State Department, escaped prosecution in Iraq for shooting dead 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007 - their US trial is ongoing.

Al-Maliki's tough position was boosted Sunday when Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came out and expressed strong opposition to intervention in Iraq by the United States - or anyone else - and he insisted that the Iraqis themselves can bring an end to chaos sweeping the country.

Khamenei also suspects Washington wants to keep Iraq under its control and place its own stooges in power.

By Tariq Abdell. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

“…The ultimate test of statesmanship is what to do in the face of war…”   -- Thatcher’s statecraft

The upsurge in Sectarian violence across Iraq underscores the blatant failure of Iraq’s consensual democracy and the vulnerabilities of its security forces as result of a host of daunting and intricate constraints: A sectarian commander-in-chief, lingering ethno-sectarian loyalties, politicized security apparatus; and the regions geopolitical tensions, namely Syria’s civil war and Saudi-Iran’s rivalries.

Irrefutably, the cumulative effects of Maliki’s sectarian-based policies – marginalization and disenfranchising of Sunnis in particular- are to blame for exacerbating Iraq’s sectarian violence and, subsequently, entrenching Iraq’s centuries-old ethno-sectarian schisms as evidenced by ISIS’s recent offensive, supported by Sunni tribes, in north-central and northern Iraq.

For Washington to help Baghdad fend off a protracted sectarian war and a total chaos, it must first devise a set of benchmarks as a precondition of U.S. military and financial support. The endgame of such benchmarks it to force Maliki to renounce his sectarian-based policies, espouse a genuine and inclusive democracy, and form a government of national unity that heads to the people’s aspirations regardless of their political and religious beliefs; to include an action plan that reflects the country’s pressing priorities:

• Genuine national reconciliation to overcome interfaith communal distrust and sectarian violence.
• Overhauling of Iraq’s security apparatus namely the forces reporting directly to Maliki -SWAT and CTS in particular- to curb sectarian loyalties, rein in corruption, and build a cohesive and effective Military.
• Repealing of the Anti-terrorism law - Article 4 in particular- and the use of secret informants and coerce confessions.
• Reversal of targeted and unjust De-Ba’atification law.
• Merit-based appointments to promote efficiency and accountability.
• Providing access to basic services (e.g., potable water, electricity, running sewer, etc) and equitable distribution of oil revenues.
• Investing in human capital through education and training to fend off societal and political unrest.
• Advancing the principles of human rights and rule of law.
• Diversifying and reviving of Iraq’ strategic industries to curb its dependence on a single commodity – fossil fuel.

By John Cookson. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

Today's audacious jihadist attack on Mosul by Al Qaeda affiliate ISIS must surely be a massive wake up call in Washington that Iraq needs urgent help.

Hundreds of jihadists seized key government offices, banks and the airport in Iraq's second city. Prison doors were smashed open and up to a 1,000 inmates released.

In a damning indictment of Iraqi security forces, army and police officers abandoned their vehicles and uniforms and fled as ISIS forces went on the rampage.

ISIS already effectively controls Al Anbar governorate including Fallujah where it declared an Islamist state. This week saw deadly bombings of Kurdish targets in Diyala. ISIS is increasingly active in Salah-al din. And now Ninevah's capital is its latest target.

Caretaker Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called for an emergency session of parliament on Thursday and by then Iraqi security forces will surely have regained some control of Mosul, where ISIS fighters may just have overreached themselves.

However the fact ISIS is so motivated, so well equipped and battle-hardened to even attempt to take Mosul is a huge blow not only to Baghdad, but also to the morale of Iraqi security forces and of course the long-suffering Iraqi people.

By Ali Mamouri for Al-Monitor. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

Iraq has a long history of conflict and rapprochement between Sunni and Shiite clerics, which has played a major role in the sectarian conflict or cohesion among the country’s sects. This factor, among with other political and social factors, has defined the historical conflict in Iraq.

The main problem is that Sunni and Shiite clerics are unable to achieve a real rapprochement and establish a network of communication that can be used to reach a solution or alleviate tensions. Instead, they have fueled the conflict in many instances due to the lack of formal communication.

Researchers can find many types of communication in the history of Shiite and Sunni clerics in Iraq. For instance, Shiite clerics have been taught by Sunni teachers and vice versa, and peaceful and calm discussion and dialogue councils have been established. However, friendly relations turned into conflict and enmity as soon as political complications set in between the two sects. What is joined by cultural relations can be separated by political disputes overnight. When political disputes come into play, they spark religious conflicts and make each party evil in the eyes of the other. Mutual accusations fly and all communication is cut off.