David D. Kirkpatrick,
the New York Times bureau chief in Cairo, has ventured to Iraq of late to
report on the thinking of our close allies, the Iraqi Shia. In their view,
there’s a whole lot of double-dealing going on.
* * *
The United States has conducted an
escalating campaign of deadly airstrikes against the extremists of the Islamic
State for more than a month. But that appears to have done little to tamp down
the conspiracy theories still circulating from the streets of Baghdad to the
highest levels of Iraqi government that the C.I.A. is secretly behind the same
extremists that it is now attacking.
“We know about who made Daesh,”
said Bahaa al-Araji, a deputy prime minister, using an Arabic shorthand for the
Islamic State on Saturday at a demonstration called by the Shiite cleric
Moktada al-Sadr to warn against the possible deployment of American ground
troops. Mr. Sadr publicly blamed the C.I.A. for creating the Islamic State in a
speech last week, and interviews suggested that most of the few thousand people
at the demonstration, including dozens of members of Parliament, subscribed to
the same theory. (Mr. Sadr is considered close to Iran, and the theory is
popular there as well.)
When an American journalist asked
Mr. Araji to clarify if he blamed the C.I.A. for the Islamic State, he
retreated: “I don’t know. I am one of the poor people,” he said, speaking
fluent English and quickly stepping back toward the open door of a
chauffeur-driven SUV. “But we fear very much. Thank you!”
The prevalence of the theory in the
streets underscored the deep suspicions of the American military’s return to
Iraq more than a decade after its invasion, in 2003. The casual endorsement by
a senior official, though, was also a pointed reminder that the new Iraqi
government may be an awkward partner for the American-led campaign to drive out
the extremists.
The Islamic State, also known by
the acronym ISIS, has conquered many of the predominantly Sunni Muslim
provinces in Iraq’s northeast, aided by the alienation of many residents to the
Shiite-dominated government of the former prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
President Obama has insisted repeatedly that American military action against
the Islamic State depended on the installation of a more inclusive government
in Baghdad, but he moved ahead before it was complete.
The Parliament has not yet
confirmed nominees for the crucial posts of interior or defense minister, in
part because of discord between Sunni and Shiite factions, and the Iraqi news
media has reported that it may be more than a month before the posts are filled.
The demonstration on Saturday was
the latest in a series of signals from Shiite leaders or militias, especially
those considered close to Iran, warning the United States not to put its
soldiers back on the ground. Mr. Obama has pledged not to send combat troops,
but he seems to have convinced few Iraqis. “We don’t trust him,” said Raad
Hatem, 40.
Haidar al-Assadi, 40, agreed. “The
Islamic State is a clear creation of the United States, and the United States
is trying to intervene again using the excuse of the Islamic State,” he said.
Shiite militias and volunteers, he
said, were already answering the call from religious leaders to defend Iraq
from the Islamic State without American help. “This is how we do it,” he said,
adding that the same forces would keep American troops out. “The main reason
Obama is saying he will not invade again is because he knows the Islamic
resistance” of the Shiite militias “and he does not want to lose a single
soldier.”
The leader of the Islamic State,
for his part, declared on Saturday that he defied the world to stop him.
“The conspiracies of Jews,
Christians, Shiites and all the tyrannical regimes in the Muslim countries have
been powerless to make the Islamic State deviate from its path,” the leader,
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared in an audio recording released over the
Internet, using derogatory terms from early Islamic history to refer to
Christians and Shiites.
“The entire world saw the
powerlessness of America and its allies before a group of believers,” he said.
“People now realize that victory is from God, and it shall not be aborted by
armies and their arsenals.”
Many at the rally in Baghdad said
they welcomed airstrikes against Mr. Baghdadi’s Islamic State but not American
ground forces, the position that Mr. Sadr has taken. Many of the 30 lawmakers
backed by Mr. Sadr — out of a Parliament of 328 seats — attended the rally.
Mr. Sadr’s supporters opposed Mr.
Maliki, the former prime minister, and many at the rally were quick to
criticize the former government for mistakes like failing to build a more
dependable army. “We had a good army, so where is this army now?” asked Waleed
al-Hasnawi, 35. “Maliki gave them everything, but they just left the
battlefield.”
But few if any blamed Mr. Maliki
for alienating Sunnis, as American officials assert, by permitting sectarian
abuses under the Shiite-dominated security forces.
Omar al-Jabouri, 31, a Sunni Muslim
from a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad who attended the rally and
said he volunteers with a Shiite brigade, argued that Mr. Maliki had alienated
most Iraqis, regardless of their sect.
“He did not just exclude and
marginalize the Sunni people; he ignored the Shiite people, too,” Mr. Jabouri
said. “He gave special help to his family, his friends, people close to him. He
did not really help the Shiite people, as many people think.”
But the Islamic State was a
different story, Mr. Jabouri said. “It is obvious to everyone that the Islamic
State is a creation of the United States and Israel.”
* * *
David D. Kirkpatrick, “Suspicions
Run Deep in Iraq That C.I.A and the Islamic State Are United,” New York Times, September 20, 2014
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