Why Mustafa Al-Kadhimi is seen as Iraq’s safest pair of hands

The assurance of support from the international community that Iraqi PM Mustafa Al-Kadhimi evidently enjoys is something that eluded his predecessors. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 15 September 2021
Follow

Why Mustafa Al-Kadhimi is seen as Iraq’s safest pair of hands

  • The PM seems determined to chart a pragmatic course for his country despite challenges
  • Recently held Baghdad conference has cemented Iraq’s links with regional and Western powers

IRBIL: When explosive-laden drones targeted a US military base inside Irbil International Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan late on Saturday, the story got buried by reports about the memorials commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

But to observers of Iraq, the incident in Irbil was the latest shot fired across the bows of a prime minister who is determined not to play into the hands of political adversaries and malign actors as he charts a course that differs significantly from those of his predecessors.

Take the Baghdad Conference for Cooperation and Partnership hosted by Mustafa Al-Kadhimi on August 28. It was attended by high-level delegations from France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar and the UAE in addition to the general secretaries of the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation.

That the Iraqi PM managed to bring so many heads of governments and organizations under one roof, even if for only one day, was undoubtedly a major diplomatic achievement.




Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi listens as US President Joe Biden speaks during a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on July 26, 2021. (AFP/File Photo)

The assurance of support from the international community that Al-Kadhimi evidently enjoys is something that eluded his predecessors — Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Haider Abadi and Nouri Al-Maliki — and will probably continue to be his strong suit going forward.

Few things are more daunting than having to steer the ship of state in a part of the Middle East riven by sectarian and political conflict. But being seen as a rare safe pair of hands means that true friends of Iraq, mindful of the competing interests that Al-Kadhimi has to juggle, are willing to cut him some slack, particularly in how he deals with the challenge posed by militias. 

As usual, no group claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 night Irbil attack, but it was at least the sixth time that drones or rockets had targeted the heavily fortified site in the past year. The US blames the assaults on the Shiite-majority Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), paramilitary groups that strongly oppose the presence of American troops in Iraq.

In addition to harassing the Biden administration, analysts say, elements within the PMF are intent on influencing the outcome of the Iraqi general election next month, and undermining a carefully constructed ceasefire arranged by the government in Baghdad.

“This attack is a message from the militias directed at the United States, which is to withdraw from Iraq, and quickly,” said Nicholas Heras, a senior analyst at the Newlines Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

Noting that the attack was not particularly destructive, he added that it signaled “that the US should expect more of these strikes until it leaves Iraq. It presents an unwelcome complication to US policy on Iraq and Syria at a time when the Biden team is trying to manage the political rancor over the withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

There are at least 2,500 US troops in Iraq, most notably in the capital, Baghdad, and at the Ain Al-Asad Air Base in Anbar province. The base in Irbil is an important logistical hub, supporting the military presence and anti-terrorism operations in neighboring Syria.

In July, President Joe Biden and Al-Kadhimi agreed to end the US combat mission in the country by the end of this year. The remaining troops will continue to assist Iraqi and Kurdish military forces in an advisory role.

The drone assault on Saturday was the latest in a series of often ineffective, sometimes lethal, politically motivated strikes. The first attack on Irbil airport took place on Sept. 30 last year, when six rockets were fired at it.

They did not cause any casualties or damage but they clearly demonstrated that American troops could be targeted in Iraqi Kurdistan, a largely stable autonomous region controlled by the pro-Western Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

On Feb. 15 this year another barrage targeted the airport, this time using 14 rockets, many of which landed in nearby residential areas. A civilian contractor and a Kurdish civilian were killed and eight people were injured.

On April 14, drones packed with explosives were used in an attack in the region for the first time, but there were no casualties. On June 26, a drone attack damaged a house on the outskirts of Irbil, a stone’s throw from the site where a new US consulate is being built. On July 6 another drone attack targeted American troops at the airport, but again there were no reports of casualties or damage.

Analysts have suggested the recent attacks might be deliberately designed to avoid causing US fatalities so that militia factions can be seen to be actively resisting the US military presence without provoking any large-scale retaliation.

Joel Wing, author of the Musings on Iraq blog, believes the intention of the most recent attack in Irbil was to undermine a ceasefire agreement arranged by Iraqi National Security Adviser Qasim Al-Araji. He announced on Friday that the government had reached a two-stage truce with the militia factions that have been targeting US troops.

The first stage envisions the cessation of hostilities until after the parliamentary elections on Oct. 10, so that Iraqis can vote in a secure and stable environment. The second stage is supposed to run until the end of the year, when the US combat mission in the country is due to formally end.

Al-Araji had “just announced he had (arranged) a ceasefire with these factions and then one group carried out this attack to thumb its nose at him,” Wing said.

He added that the central government in Baghdad and the Irbil-based KRG are trying to stop the attacks. They have increased security and intelligence efforts in the unstable, disputed territories from which the militias carry out many of their strikes. Despite this growing cooperation, however, countering drone and missile strikes is difficult.

“The security forces have found some rockets before they have been launched, but there is no real protection from drones because they can be launched from anywhere within the device’s range,” Wing said.

Al-Kadhimi has adopted a cautious yet pragmatic approach to government efforts to reduce the power of the PMF factions, while seeking to avoid a showdown that could lead to a violent conflict. He has, for example, earned praise from powerful Shiite parties by sealing the deal to end the US combat mission.




Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, right, receives Dubai’s Ruler and UAE Vice President Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum on his arrival for the Baghdad regional summit. (Prime Minister’s Media Office/AFP)

Substantive or stylistic, these policy adjustments have differentiated Al-Kadhimi from his predecessors, who were widely viewed as failures when it came to navigating the region’s treacherous political waters.

At the same time, Iraq’s nascent reputation as a mediator capable of bringing together regional rivals around the same table is expected to have a positive influence on Al-Kadhimi’s standing in domestic politics despite the sharp divides.

This is not to say that the going has been easy for Al-Kadhimi. In June last year Kataib Hezbollah, one of the militias under the PMF umbrella, tried to intimidate him inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, the center of Iraq’s political life, even mounting a show of force outside the prime minister’s residence. This was intended to put pressure on the government to release Kataib members arrested for plotting a rocket attack on the US embassy.

In May this year, another group of PMF fighters staged a show of strength in the Green Zone and succeeded in forcing the country’s elected leaders to release a militia commander who had been arrested in Anbar.

Abdulla Hawez, a Kurdish-affairs analyst, said that Saturday’s strike differed from previous incidents in that it came after the US and Iraq had agreed to end the combat mission, and after the militias said they would cease their attacks. He also pointed out that on this occasion the militias did not launch attacks on US interests elsewhere in Iraq.

“The message appears to be different from the other attacks — this is more Kurdistan-specific,” he told Arab News. “This one might have been a warning to the KRG that these factions will not accept the US staying in Kurdistan if there is any such attempt through US-KRG dialogue or through backchannels.”

Could the militias behind the attacks also be looking to appeal to their supporters ahead of next month’s vote?

“Anti-KRG rhetoric is popular in the south, but this alone is unlikely to tip the balance in favor of the militias, especially given that people nowadays care more about basic services and the economy and less about sectarian politics,” Hawez said.

No matter what the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 Irbil attack intended, it is unlikely to have gone down well with Iraqis who are focused less on politics and more on the basic necessities of life.


Syria’s Aleppo International Airport reopens for domestic, international flights

Updated 3 sec ago
Follow

Syria’s Aleppo International Airport reopens for domestic, international flights

  • The first passenger flight from Damascus landed after the country’s second major hub reopened for air traffic on Tuesday

LONDON: The Syrian Arab Republic reopened the country’s second major airport for flights after nearly three months of closure.

The first passenger flight from Damascus landed at Aleppo International Airport after it reopened for air traffic on Tuesday, amid an official ceremony attended by representatives of Syria’s new interim government, the SANA news agency reported.

The airport was closed in November during the offensive by rebel groups against the regime of Bashar Assad in early December.

Syrian authorities have conducted maintenance and restoration work over the past three months to resume air traffic to and from Aleppo, the country’s second largest city after the capital and an important industrial and trade center.

Authorities announced that Aleppo will begin receiving international flights, facilitating the return of nearly 10 million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey and Europe. It will also enable the visits of local and foreign investors to the city, SANA added.

Alaa Sallal, the director of relations at the Syrian Civil Aviation Authority, said efforts are underway to expand Aleppo International Airport’s services “to turn it into a key air gateway in Syria capable of handling more flights and connecting the country to the world.”

In January, international flights to and from Damascus resumed for the first time since the fall of Assad with a direct flight from Doha — the first in 13 years.


Netanyahu coalition jeopardized over ultra-Orthodox exemption from army

Updated 36 min 19 sec ago
Follow

Netanyahu coalition jeopardized over ultra-Orthodox exemption from army

  • The government must pass the budget by the end of the month or call snap elections
  • United Torah Judaism holds seven seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament

BNEI BRAK, Israel: One of Israel’s most divisive domestic issues has reared itself again to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a group in the ruling coalition said it would bring the government down unless it exempts ultra-Orthodox Jews from army service.
Some members of United Torah Judaism, one of two ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties in the coalition, said in a letter that they would vote against the budget if the government did not pass a new law formalising exemptions for religious students.
“If this matter is once again sidelined or delayed for any reason, we will not be able to continue as partners in the coalition,” said the March 6 letter signed by Housing Minister and party chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf and two others.
The government must pass the budget by the end of the month or call snap elections. United Torah Judaism holds seven seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
It is too early to predict the consequences. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is a proven master at smoothing over disagreements in his coalitions. An ultra-nationalist group that quit the government over the ceasefire in Gaza in January announced on Tuesday it was returning.
But pollster Mitchell Barak, who worked for Netanyahu in the 1990s, said this time ultra-Orthodox politicians appeared unwilling to compromise, and the prime minister might have to look outside the coalition for support to pass the budget, an extraordinary step.
“He’s going to look for someone who can compromise, save him, and be that ‘freyer’,” he said, speaking before the ultra-nationalists announced their return to the coalition and using a Yiddish word for someone who lets others take advantage of him. “That’s how he operates.”
The prime minister’s office declined to comment on the ultra-Orthodox ultimatum and whether he believed the budget could pass without their support.

MILITARY STRAINED
In Israel, military service is mandatory at age 18, after which Israelis become reservists liable to be called up for training or deployment.
But dating back to Israel’s founding in 1948 it made an exemption for ultra-Orthodox communities, known as Haredim, whose young men mainly dedicate their lives to studying religious texts in academies known as yeshivot.
Those communities were initially small but have grown rapidly in the following decades. According to government data, there are now 1.4 million Haredim, accounting for about 14 percent of the population, deepening resentment among other Israelis who are conscripted.
In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the exemption was unconstitutional, and last year it ordered the military to conscript yeshiva students. Legal experts say the only way to restore the exemption would be to pass a new law enshrining it.
Members of the Haredi community say they would resist any attempt to conscript their children.
“They can put us in prison,” said Yehoshua Menuchin at his home in Bnei Brak, a densely populated city close to Tel Aviv where many Haredim live.
Menuchin, who has a 19-year-old son who is not serving, said the debate was driven by politics, rather than by genuine military need.
“If it’s a matter of survival, like an Arab invasion, then the Haredim will be the first to volunteer in order to save lives. But as long as it is political, it won’t ever happen.”
But 18 months into war in Gaza and major military operations in the West Bank and Lebanon, resentment is growing, and many lawmakers say the exemption is unjustifiable.
“They don’t know what 30 days of reserve duty a year is, and they don’t know what it is to dread that knock on the door,” centrist opposition lawmaker Elazar Stern, a former general, told Reuters, referring to the moment a parent learns of a child’s death in service.

DIVINE INTERVENTION
The Haredim live in insular neighborhoods centered around strict religious observance, with their own schools that largely eschew math and science. They have twice as many children as the national average, rely heavily on state welfare and charity, and those who work are often in low-paying jobs.
They believe that sending their children to the military is an existential threat, fearing that exposure to secular Israelis and outside influences could undermine their way of life.
“I know one thing: we must go the way the Torah instructs us,” said Meir Zvi Bergman, one of Israel’s most widely followed Haredi rabbis. “God does not want us to go, so we won’t go.”
The army says it is working to create conditions to make it easier for more Haredim to serve, such as dedicated battalions with strict religious practices, including regular prayer and gender segregation.
“The responsibility to defend the country must be shared fairly,” Eyal Zamir, Israel’s new chief of the military staff, said in a speech this month taking up his post. (Reporting by Alexander Cornwell, additional reporting by Maayan Lubell and Steven Scheer)


South Sudan party partially withdraws from peace process

Updated 18 March 2025
Follow

South Sudan party partially withdraws from peace process

  • “The ongoing political witch-hunts continue to threaten the very essence and the existence of the (peace deal),” Pierino said
  • The fighting around Nasir in Upper Nile state has displaced 50,000 people since late February, according to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator

NAIROBI: A major party in South Sudan’s coalition government said on Tuesday it had suspended its role in a key element of a 2018 peace deal as relations between its leader Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir deteriorate amid clashes and arrests.
The agreement ended a five-year war between forces loyal to Kiir and his rival Machar, who now serves as First Vice President leading the SPLM-IO party. But the two men have a fractious relationship, which has worsened in recent weeks following clashes in the country’s east.
Earlier this month security forces rounded up several SPLM-IO officials, including the petroleum minister and the deputy head of the army, after the White Army ethnic militia forced troops to withdraw from the town of Nasir near the Ethiopian border.
The government has accused the SPLM-IO of links with the White Army, which mostly comprises armed ethnic Nuer youths who fought alongside Machar’s forces in the 2013-2018 war against predominantly ethnic Dinka troops loyal to Kiir. The party denies the allegations.
Oyet Nathaniel Pierino, deputy chairman of the SPLM-IO, said on Tuesday the party would not participate in security arrangements tied to the peace process until the detained officials were released.
“The ongoing political witch-hunts continue to threaten the very essence and the existence of the (peace deal),” Pierino said in a statement.
The fighting around Nasir in Upper Nile state has displaced 50,000 people since late February, of which 10,000 have fled to Ethiopia, according to Anita Kiki Gbeho, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan.

RAMPANT HATE SPEECH
South Sudan’s United Nations peacekeeping chief Nicholas Haysom said he was concerned the country was “on the brink of relapse into civil war.”
“With the proliferation of mis/disinformation in the public domain, hate speech is now rampant, raising concerns that the conflict could assume an ethnic dimension,” he said in a speech to the African Union.
Analysts say the war in neighboring Sudan has also spurred the breakdown of the peace process, with South Sudan’s oil revenues suspended, escalating regional tensions and arms flooding across the border.
“Already we are seeing the initial stages of spillover fighting in Upper Nile from the Sudan war. It will be difficult to prevent those tensions from spreading to (the capital) Juba,” said Alan Boswell from the International Crisis Group.


Families urge Israel PM to ‘stop the killing’ of Gaza hostages

Updated 18 March 2025
Follow

Families urge Israel PM to ‘stop the killing’ of Gaza hostages

  • The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it had received no response to its request to meet with Netanyahu
  • “Now it becomes clear — the public officials did not meet with them because they were planning the explosion of the ceasefire”

JERUSALEM: Relatives of Israeli hostages in Gaza accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday of sacrificing their loved ones by carrying out a wave of deadly strikes that threatened a fragile truce.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it had received no response to its request to meet with Netanyahu and other officials to hear how the remaining hostages would be “protected from the military pressure.”
“Now it becomes clear — the public officials did not meet with them because they were planning the explosion of the ceasefire, which could sacrifice their family members,” the campaign group said.
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s unprecedented October 2023 attack which sparked the war, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The overngith air strikes were by far the deadliest since a January ceasefire that largely halted the fighting and saw the handover of 33 hostages, both alive and dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory said at least 413 people were killed in the strikes.
The forum called on supporters of the hostages to cemonstrate outside Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem, warning that “military pressure could further endanger their lives and complicate efforts to bring them back safe and sound.”
“The families of the hostages will demand: Stop the killing and disappearance of the hostages now! First, return them — then everything else.”
The return of the hostages is a priority for the majority of Israelis.
“This morning, the moment we realized that we were going back to war, the first thing I thought about was: what about the hostages? This is a death sentence for the hostages, and it’s simply terrible,” said Muriel Aranov, a 62-year-old pensioner living in Tel Aviv.
As protesters headed to Jerusalem, Netanyahu took part in a security assessment with defense officials in Tel Aviv, including Defense Minister Israel Katz, his office said.
An earlier statement from Netanyahu’s office said the strikes were ordered after “Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators.”
“We are at an impasse, we have said ‘yes’ more than once to concrete proposals from the US special envoy to extend the ceasefire, and Hamas has said ‘no’,” foreign ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said in a briefing.
“From now on, Israel will act against Hamas with increased military intensity,” he added.


Rafah border crossing in Gaza is closed, EU spokesperson says

Updated 18 March 2025
Follow

Rafah border crossing in Gaza is closed, EU spokesperson says

  • EUBAM mission of the European Union has started to put in place emergency procedures

BRUSSELS: The border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip in Rafah is closed, a spokesperson for the European Commission said on Tuesday.
“The crossing point is closed and the EUBAM mission of the European Union has started to put in place emergency procedures to deal with the situation as it develops,” the spokesperson told reporters in Brussels.