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U.S. Takes a Risk: Old Iraqi Enemies Are Now Allies
MOSUL,
Iraq — Iraq’s interior minister, Qassim al-Araji, has a troubled
history with the United States. He was detained twice by the Americans
at the notorious Camp Bucca prison during the Iraq war and held for 23
months, accused of smuggling Iranian-made bombs that had become
effective killers of American troops.
As
a former commander of an Iranian-backed militia, his loyalties are open
to question. But when he met with the United States ambassador last
year, he had a surprising message: He and other former Shiite militants
wanted the Americans to stay. Iraq needed their help, he said, to
stabilize the country and combat the threat of the Islamic State.
He
even jokingly praised the superiority of American jails over Iraqi
ones. “You have some things to teach us,” he told the American
ambassador, Douglas A. Silliman.
The
request represented a monumental switch for some of Iraq’s most
influential Shiite leaders, and an opportunity for the United States to
achieve its elusive security goals in the region, albeit with some
unlikely partners.
But
the evolving alliance means that the United States military is taking a
risk: training, sharing intelligence and planning missions with former
members of Iranian-backed militias that once fought and killed
Americans.
Several former militia
commanders have risen to high-level political positions. Now, a
coalition of them is expected to be among the biggest winners in
parliamentary elections this Saturday, giving them even more prominent
roles in the new government and possibly determining the future of the
American presence in Iraq.
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The United States has expanded secretive military ventures and counterterrorism missions
in remote corners of the world, but in Iraq it is taking a different
tack. Here, the United States is reducing its troop presence and
gambling that common interests with former adversaries will help prevent
a resurgence of the Islamic State. The bet seemed to pay off with the
announcement this week that a joint Iraqi-American intelligence sting captured five senior Islamic State leaders.
And
as President Trump pursues a confrontational approach with Iran, the
American military hopes to use its evolving Iraqi partnerships to peel away Shiite factions from Iran’s orbit and chip away at Tehran’s influence in Iraq and the region.
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“This
is a time when Iraqi patriots can build their nation,” said Lt. Gen.
Paul E. Funk II, the commander of the American-led coalition fighting
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. “There is an opportunity here. We
will do all we can to give them all the help they need and want.”
Last
year, Congress appropriated $3.6 billion to train and equip Iraqi
security forces, with a priority on units under Mr. Araji’s Interior
Ministry. They include border guards monitoring the long Syrian-Iraqi
frontier, a place where American and Iraqi commanders fear that Islamic
State remnants could regroup, and which Iran sees as part of its
corridor to move fighters and weapons to Syria and Lebanon. The funds
also equip the Iraqi SWAT teams responsible for arresting and detaining
terrorism suspects, and train a national police force in charge of daily
security.
It was the Islamic State’s
conquest of a third of Iraqi territory in 2014 that first brought
together once-rival Iraqi militias and security forces with an
American-led military coalition in a united effort to defeat a common
enemy. The United States wanted to prevent the Islamic State from
building a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and the Shiite militias saw the
Sunni extremist group as a sectarian threat.
After
Iraq’s regular armed forces crumbled in the face of the Islamic State
blitz, a coalition of Iranian-financed Shiite militias took up
front-line positions against the extremists. The militias never worked
directly with the Americans, but a joint command helped coordinate their
efforts to defeat the Islamic State.
Now,
some of the most influential militia leaders are working directly with
the Americans and pressing for a continued American military presence.
For some of these former militants, America’s display of superior equipment and skills side by side with them in battle
brought a newfound respect. Others say they had an ideological
reckoning, a realization that years of sectarianism and interference
from Iraq’s neighbors had made their nation vulnerable to invasion.
Partnering with the world’s superpower, they said, was the best way to
bring Iraq back up from its knees.
“We
all made mistakes in the past, the Americans, as well as us,” said Hadi
al-Ameri, the leader of the Badr Organization, the largest of the
Shiite militias that helped battle the Islamic State and the leader of
the electoral alliance of former militia members, known as Fatah. “Now,
we need their help. We can’t let our country become a playground for
other powers and their agendas.”
The vote on Saturday could determine whether the United States military stays in Iraq or leaves.
Most
polls show that the front-runners are the current prime minister,
Haider al-Abadi, Washington’s closest ally in Iraq, and Mr. Ameri, whose
electoral list includes the interior minister, Mr. Araji. If either of
them lead the new government, the military partnership is likely to
continue.
However, Iraqi political
analysts say that the previous prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who
demanded the withdrawal of American forces in 2011 and still has close
ties to Iran, could play spoiler. They believe he has a good chance of
being included in a new coalition government, giving Iran a way to foil
America’s growing influence.
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So
far this year, the American-led coalition has trained six brigades of
Iraqi border units, about a quarter of the estimated force required to
seal the largely barren, desert frontier with Syria, as well as six
brigades of federal police and a special Baghdad-based police force.
The tight-knit nature of the partnership is already on display in several of Iraq’s security hot spots.
On
the streets of Mosul, once the largest city in the Islamic State’s
so-called caliphate, Iraqi counterterrorism police receive intelligence
from American Special Forces deployed at the regional Iraqi command
headquarters there and allow the Americans access to Islamic State
detainees. On the dusty Syrian border, American and coalition forces
provide air surveillance for the border guards newly equipped with
American communications and tactical gear. And on Iraqi bases outside
Baghdad, coalition teams from Italy, Canada, Denmark and France are
training law enforcement units.
But
the partnership means that the United States is working with some
Iraqis who previously received financing, training and arms from the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, considered a terrorist organization
by the American government.
Critics say it’s giving the fox the keys to the henhouse.
“It’s
crazy,” said Michael Pregent, a retired military intelligence officer
in Iraq who now works at the Hudson Institute, a policy research
organization. “Americans are sitting with a lieutenant of Qassim
Suleimani,” the leader of the Revolutionary Guards, “giving him direct
access to American intelligence, weapons and equipment.”
Indeed,
Mr. Ameri, the leader of the political alliance of former militia
members and a possible next Iraqi prime minister, has a long history of
ties to Iran. When Gen. David H. Petraeus commanded American forces in
Iraq during the so-called surge of 2007, and Iranian-armed Shiite
militias were killing American forces, he used Mr. Ameri as a liaison to
Mr. Suleimani.
But many current and
retired American officials who served in Iraq acknowledge that while
there is a risk, you work with the partners you have.
“It’s
like trying to do business or build relationships in Vietnam without
dealing with the former Viet Cong,” said Douglas Ollivant, a retired
Army officer and National Security Council adviser for Iraq under two
White House administrations. “At some point, America needs to work with
men who previously were on the other side.”
Iran, a Shiite theocracy, still wields great power over Iraq,
which has a Shiite majority. Iran has extended its influence into
Iraq’s political, economic and cultural spheres, and the Shiite militias
it bolstered in Iraq give it a low-cost paramilitary force to protect
its interests there.
Mr. Ameri led
the coalition of Iranian-backed militias, known as the Popular
Mobilization Forces, to defend against the Islamic State’s advances
toward Baghdad in 2014. Those militias were credited with helping to
turn the tide against the extremist group, but some units were also
accused of grave human rights abuses, including illegal detentions and
extrajudicial killings.
Several
other members of Mr. Ameri’s electoral coalition lead prominent
Iranian-backed factions that have antagonistic histories with the
Americans.
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One
of them, Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, led the militia that ambushed and
killed five American soldiers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala in
2007. He spent three years as an American detainee.
More recently, his men fought on behalf of the government in Syria and
he has been filmed in Lebanon with Hezbollah commanders touring the
Israeli border.
But a regional
campaign manager for Mr. Khazali’s group, Habib al-Hillawi, publicly
apologized for the American deaths this month. “Times are different
now,” he said on the sideline of a campaign rally.
And
in a recent interview in his office in Baghdad, Mr. Khazali said that
he supported a continued — albeit limited — American presence in Iraq.
“Limited and specific training missions would be acceptable to us, as
well as an American force proportional to that mission,” he said.
Mr. Araji, the interior minister, says his views have evolved to match Iraq’s political realities.
A
secret cable from the United States Embassy in Baghdad in 2007 said the
Americans had “good information” that he had been involved in smuggling
the Iranian-engineered bombs to Iraq, leading to his imprisonment.
But
Mr. Araji denied any wrongdoing, and was ultimately released without
charges. In an interview, he said that American intelligence officials
had concluded he had been “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
When
he took over the Interior Ministry — which controls the nation’s
intelligence agencies, elite counterterrorism forces, border guards,
civil defense forces and regular traffic cops — he and like-minded
colleagues in the army and government sought to broker new relationships
with the coalition.
That agency,
too, has a deeply checkered past. While Washington had previously
allocated billions of dollars to help Iraq’s domestic law enforcement,
the Interior Ministry had been considered too dysfunctional, sectarian
and corrupt to build durable partnerships.
A
decade ago, rival Shiite militias controlled the Baghdad police, a
division of the Interior Ministry, and they were often implicated in
kidnappings, killings and even ethnic cleansing of Sunni neighborhoods.
Mr.
Araji set a new tone when, as minister, he tried to clean house. He
started internal investigations and ousted about 30,000 people who had
broken the law, abused their power or “didn’t display the type of
behavior conducive to a professional security force,” he said.
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He also promoted several long-serving Sunnis to key positions in an effort to integrate the mostly Shiite ministry.
“There
have been steps to stamp out favoritism,” said Gen. Ammar al-Kubaisi, a
Sunni who heads the Border Guards 2nd Division, responsible for the
Syrian frontier. “We still need to work on this, but sectarianism is
going away.”
Notably, for the
Americans, Mr. Araji publicly supported the international military
coalition at critical moments, namely in the aftermath of a 2017 coalition airstrike in Mosul that killed more than 100 civilians.
“My
most important goal is to bring security to Iraq,” he said during an
angry debate in Parliament. “Iraq is in need of the friendship of the
Americans.”
As a safeguard, Iraqi
officials have accepted a key requirement for the coalition training:
American vetting of each training candidate. Military commanders say
this security check, which can take up to two months, is meant to root
out former Shiite militia members involved in violence against American
forces, or suspected of human rights abuses and other crimes.
Mr.
Araji said he did not consider this vetting an infringement on Iraq’s
sovereignty, but part of the process of building a stronger nation.
People rejected for training know it is a black mark that will sideline
their careers, he said in an interview this month at his Baghdad office.
“We have zero tolerance for people who have the wrong attitudes.”
Mr.
Ameri and Mr. Araji have cooperated with Iraqi army commanders and
Prime Minister Abadi to formulate a multiyear training schedule with the
international coalition.
So
far, training has been approved through 2018. American and Iraqi
commanders agree that it is vital for the missions to continue through
at least 2020, but further plans have been frozen until after the
election.
American commanders,
worrying that anti-American political factions could make the coalition
training a wedge issue, halted news media access to training operations
during Iraq’s election campaign.
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Last
week, they announced the closing of America’s ground forces command in
Iraq, which had been active since 2014. This move is expected to
decrease the number of American troops deployed here, currently about
5,000, which was already a fraction of the 170,000 troops serving in
Iraq at the peak of American involvement in 2007.
Whoever
leads the new Iraqi government will have to tackle the thorny question
of what to do with the now-institutionalized militias, either by trying
to integrate them into the army’s command structure or leaving them
quasi-independent and a potential tool of Iran’s.
Mr.
Ameri, as a political and military leader with credibility in the
pro-American and pro-Iranian camps, may be best positioned to bring the
militias into the fold of the American-trained domestic security forces.
If he wants to.
Mr.
Ameri, who is introduced at his campaign events as the “sheikh of the
holy warriors,” is vague on the question. In a recent interview, he said
only that he believed the state should control the monopoly of force.
For
now, the Americans are gambling on his sense of Iraqi patriotism, says
Michael Knights, the senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy and expert on Iraqi security forces.
“Who
is Hadi al-Ameri?” Mr. Knights said. “That is the fundamental question.
Is he more loyal to Iran than Iraq? We will only know it when it’s too
late.”
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