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As Iraqi forces continues to advance against ISIS militants in West Mosul, their defeat is inevitable, which raises the salient question about Iraq's readiness and preparation for administrating the city after the militants removal.

Analysts on Iraq, while worried, do believe there are some glimmers of hope that the city can be substantially stabilized after its completely pried from the caliphate's grip.

There are no real plans, it is all improvisation at the moment. Resources are being thrown piecemeal at needs as they become available, said Michael Knights, the Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute and noted Iraq analyst.

A patchwork of road, water and electricity reconstruction is evident, he added.

When asked if Baghdad will be able to secure, stabilize and rebuild Mosul long-term after ISIS's removal Knights responded in the affirmative, but added that the long-term is a long way away.

Dylan O'Driscoll, a former analyst the Middle East Research Institute (MERI) think-tank in Erbil who now works at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) at the University of Manchester, warned of ill-planning before the Mosul operation began. Political timetables in both Baghdad and Washington saw both powers overlook the importance of anticipating how to deal with the long-term situation in Mosul, as opposed to just the immediate military task of removing the militants.

Before the beginning of the operation last October he wrote a report on Mosul and the future of the wider Nineveh region published by MERI which outlined the shortcomings of current plans, or lack thereof, for that areas future. O'Driscoll compared this to the poor post-conflict planning following the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, and the instability which subsequently plagued the country ever since, and warned that if Mosul's liberation is devoid of long-term planning it will likely result in the resurfacing of a number of issues responsible for the rise of ISIS in Iraq in the first place.

I still share the same concerns I had when my report on the future of Nineveh was published before the military campaign began last year, O'Driscoll told Rudaw English. I don't see adequate preparation for the governance of the province post-ISIS and the necessary institutional restructuring is widely being ignored.

At the same time, there is very little development of coordinated localized security solutions allowing for the long-term security of the province. On the development side, things are also moving slow, particularly with regards to restarting the economy.

O'Driscoll fears that a combination of these factors will see Nineveh quickly becoming a geopolitical playground where multiple entities are competing for influence.

He does nevertheless see some positive indicators for the future of the region.

The resilience of the local people has been immensely impressive and in my opinion Haider al-Abadi has grown as a leader, O'Driscoll concluded.

Joel Wing, an Iraq analyst who runs the Musings on Iraq blog, is also anxious about the city's future. However, he already sees some positive developments on the city's east side, which was completely recaptured in January.

When east Mosul was freed some residents started complaining that they were not getting any help from the government to rebuild, Wing said. Nineveh officials told the press that they had a plan for reconstruction as well as Baghdad. Now that tune has changed. Nineveh officials admit that they are working on a plan right now, but they say there's no money for it.

Wing says this is a huge problem given the fact that Mosul is such a large city with so many needs.

East Mosul has some areas there were heavily damaged, but most of it looks pretty good, and already some services are being restored slowly, he added. The west however looks pretty devastated. If there's not a serious rebuilding plan that could cost Baghdad the support it has won from the residents for liberating them.

Wing also points out that stabilizing and rebuilding Mosul is a process which will have to include a large security component.

The contracts have to be policed and investigated because the Islamic State is going to try to exploit them to raise money and rebuild, he concluded.

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Is Iraq prepared for the day after ISIS in Mosul? - Rudaw

BAGHDAD Just over 10 years ago, Qasim al-Araji was being arrested a second time by American forces in Iraq. The charges were serious: smuggling arms used to attack U.S. troops and involvement in an assassination cell at the height of sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq following the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Now, he heads of one of Iraq's most powerful ministries.

With credentials that include training from Iranian special operators known as the Quds force and time spent as a guerrilla and militia commander, Iraq's Interior Minister al-Araji is now trumpeting his respect for human rights and support for the U.S.-led coalition in the fight against the Islamic State group. But the forces he now commands have a long history of Shiite domination and abuse, factors that partially contributed to the rise in support for ISIS in Iraq.

Back in 2007, al-Araji was held by the United States for 23 months. He spent most of his captivity at Bucca prison, including long periods in solitary confinement.

Today, at the head of one of Iraq's most powerful ministries, al-Araji laughs off questions about lingering hostility toward U.S. forces.

"That's life," he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press, his manner boisterous and unpolished as he shuttled between meetings at a small Interior Ministry office inside Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone. "I was their prisoner and now I meet with their ambassador."

Al-Araji's office confirmed that he met with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq within days of taking office to express his support for the U.S. role in the fight against ISIS and to request additional support for his ministry and forces.

Following a controversial March 17 strike in Mosul that killed more than 100 civilians, al-Araji took a rare public position for an Iraqi politician: he defended the U.S.-led coalition and the use of airstrikes in Mosul on the floor of Iraq's parliament.

"My most important goal is to bring security to Iraq," al-Araji said, "and (to achieve that) Iraq is in need of the friendship of the Americans."

Under al-Araji, the Interior Ministry has already received more support from the U.S.-led coalition.

In the fight for Mosul, greater coalition air and ground support for Iraq's federal police who fall under the command of the Interior Ministry have allowed them to take a lead role in the city's west.

The U.S.-led coalition is also training and arming local and border police across Iraq, other forces that now fall under al-Araji's command.

But Iraq's police are some of the same forces who were accused of using excessive force, carrying out mass detentions of Sunni males and routinely torturing detainees in the lead-up to the summer of 2014, according to human rights groups and a 2013 State Department report on human rights practices in Iraq. The abuses contributed to Sunni resentment of central government rule and fueled support for ISIS extremists in Iraq's Sunni north and west.

Al-Araji, who spent years in exile in Iran, first traveled there as a teenager in the 1980s and was trained by Iranian special forces as a guerrilla fighter to resist Saddam Hussein's regime. In the Iran-Iraq war, he fought on Iran's side. Al-Araji describes his years in Iran as a fighter as formative.

After the fall of Baghdad in 2003, al-Araji and thousands of other fighters poured across the border into Iraq.

"We didn't have any military activities," he said of his first days back in Iraq, "but we were supporting the overthrow of the regime. The Americans didn't understand, we were both working for the same end."

On April 19 that year he was arrested by U.S. forces on suspicion of commanding militia forces, held for 85 days and then released on insufficient evidence. In 2004, following the fall of Saddam, al-Araji said he fully transitioned to politics, running for local office in Baghdad's Wasit province.

But three years later he was arrested again by U.S. forces. A secret cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Jan. 19, 2007, published by WikiLeaks stated that U.S. forces "had good information based on multiple sources," that al-Araji was "involved in smuggling and distribution" of explosives that were being used to target U.S. forces and that he was "also suspected in involvement in an assassination cell."

After nearly two years, al-Araji was again released on insufficient evidence.

"I believe every difficult stage leaves something inside a human being," al-Araji said. "Being a prisoner taught me patience, it made me stronger."

Al-Araji returned to local politics, rose through the ranks of the Badr organization and became a parliamentary bloc leader.

After the fall of Mosul, Badr's military wing closely supported by Iran racked up a string of high profile victories against ISIS in 2014. In the months that followed, Badr and the group's leader Hadi al-Amiri rode the wave of those victories for political gain in Baghdad and secured de-facto control of the country's Interior Ministry.

Badr member Mohammed al-Ghabban was appointed to lead the ministry in October 2014, but was forced to resign in July 2016 amid mounting anger following a massive truck bombing claimed by ISIS in central Baghdad that killed more than 300 people.

Al-Araji appointed in January takes over the ministry at a critical time for the country's security forces who are under increasing pressure to eliminate the last pockets of ISIS control, prevent an insurgency from bubbling up in the wake of territorial victories, and repair their reputation in Iraq's Sunni heartland.

British Ambassador to Iraq Frank Baker told the AP he talks to al-Araji regularly. He described him as an "an Iraqi patriot" who "faces many challenges but is doing a very good job for Iraq and the Iraqi people."

Looking back at his career, al-Arajii says some things about him have changed.

"With my current position comes great responsibility," he said, explaining that because of that he considers the choices he makes carefully.

"But as a person, I have not changed, I'm the same."

Read more from the original source:
Former US prisoner now leading Iraq's Interior ministry - Military Times

After six years of civil war, Syria remains the bloodiest battlefield on the planet. But theres one other conflict zone whose violence in recent years has come to eclipse both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the bloodshed is right on Americas doorstep.

Thanks to the rising tide of cartel violence, Mexico surpassed Iraq and Afghanistan to become the worlds second-deadliest war zone in 2016, according to the annual Armed Conflict Survey by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The reign of terror wrought upon innocent civilians by Mexicos drug cartels accounted for 23,000 fatalities in 2016, according to IISSs study of ongoing conflicts around the world. Thats compared with around 16,000 deaths in Iraq and 17,000 in Afghanistan. (All three pale in comparison to the sixth year of the Syrian civil war, which took more than 50,000 lives last year.)

The rise of cartel violence in Mexico isnt surprising: Bloodied bodies turn up on the local news on a seemingly regular basis, usually as a warning to journalists and law enforcement to keep their distance.

But compared with the conflict zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, Mexico is a bit of an outlier in one key respect. Bloomberg reports:

Mexico is a conflict marked by the absence of artillery, tanks or combat aviation, IISS director general John Chipman said in remarks at the surveys launch in London on Tuesday. Virtually all of those deaths were caused by small arms.

The largest number of fatalities occurred in Mexican states that have become key battlegrounds for control between competing, increasingly fragmented cartels, he said, with violence flaring as gangs try to clear areas of rivals so they can monopolize drug trafficking routes.

According to the Department of State, at least 163 Americans were killed in Mexico between December 2014 and December 2016 thats only including deaths that State officially classified as homicides.

Since December, the State Department has maintained a travel warning for travelers to Mexico, stating that gun battles between rival criminal organizations or with Mexican authorities have taken place on streets and in public places during broad daylight, while U.S. citizens have been the victims of violent crimes, including homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery in various Mexican states.

The irony, of course, is that the conflict raging just below Americas southern border often spills over onto American soil.

And thats not just because of heroin, which killed more Americans than guns in 2015: According to the Drug Enforcement Agencys 2016 National Drug Threat Assessment, Mexican cartels work with smaller local criminal groups and gangs across the United States for retail drug distribution and transportation in major cities like Chicago, Boston, and Washington.

Though the cartels U.S. associates generally refrain from inter-cartel violence that accounts for the high fatality rate in 2016 to avoid police scrutiny, its their ambitions and vendettas that are increasingly accounting for growing gang violence across the U.S., according to the DEA.

Its no surprise that the cartels have turned our southern neighbor into a battlefield on par with Iraq and Afghanistan. But the problem Mexico poses for the U.S. is similar to that posed by our faraway battlefields: What can America do to stop the violence, much less prevent its spread domestically?

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Mexico Surpasses Afghanistan and Iraq As The World's Second-Deadliest Conflict Zone - Task & Purpose

For once I wished a play had been longer Henry Lloyd-Hughes as Rory Stewart in Occupational Hazards. Photograph: Marc Brenner

There have been plays, such as David Hares Stuff Happens, that examined the causes of western intervention in Iraq. Stephen Browns adaptation of Rory Stewarts 2006 memoir of his time as a provincial governor in post-Saddam Iraq is one of the first to look at the actual consequences. The result is instructive, enlightening and very well staged by Simon Godwin but, at 105 minutes, it leaves too little time to pursue the questions that it raises. For once, I wished a play had been much longer.

Stewart currently seeking re-election as a Tory MP is the pivotal figure of the story. Having been a diplomat and foot-slogging explorer of the Middle East, he volunteers his services to the newly created Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad in 2003.He is deputed by its chief, Paul Bremer, to go to the south to Maysan and help create a modern, secular Iraq. The play charts his attempts to impose a democratic structure on the provinces hostile factions.

At one point, Stewart complains of being bombarded with a torrent of information and the audience is in much the same position. To be fair, Brown does a decent job of untangling the complex threads of a chaotic situation. Stewart first has to face the demands for jobs, electricity and wages for the police. His prime task, however, is to create a council that will reconcile the followers of a tribal sheikh, Karim Mahood, and a radical Islamist cleric, Seyyed Hassan. In the short term, he succeeds and even creates elections for the post of a locally appointed governor. What is achieved in the long term is open to debate.

Such is the helter-skelter rush of events, however, that there is no time to air the big issues. Can democracy be created by outside agencies? Do occupying forces inflame an already tense situation? What moral authority does the west have for nation-building? I appreciate that Stewart, in the heat of the moment, had little opportunity for abstract speculation. But, while Browns play effectively recreates the nightmarish conflicts Stewart faced, it would make better drama if it viewed his story in a wider historical perspective. It tells us what happened. It doesnt explore its larger political significance.

Godwins production, however, has a hurtling energy and makes good use of the auditorium to confirm Stewarts point that politics in Iraq is often a form of theatre. Henry Lloyd-Hughes admirably captures Stewarts youthful mix he was only 30 at the time of outward confidence and inner uncertainty. There is strong support from Silas Carson as the lordly Karim and Johndeep More as his clerical antagonist, and from Vincent Ebrahim as a harassed professor and Aiysha Hart as his progressive daughter seeking to improve the lot of Iraqi women. The play heightens our awareness of the hazards of foreign occupation, but drama ultimately depends on the conflict of ideas as much as the recreation of actual events.

Occupational Hazards is at Hampstead theatre, London, until 3 June. Box office: 020-7722 9301.

Link:
Occupational Hazards review headlong rush through Rory ... - The Guardian

Iraqs northern city of Kirkuk becomes a disputed area as the local provincial council decides to conduct a referendum on its status.

Photo by: AFP

The Kurdish Regional Government flag (L) and the Iraqi flag (R) being raised over a government building in Kirkuk, Iraq, March 28, 2017.

The dual flags of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) wave across Kirkuk, symbolising a larger struggle overcontrol ofthe oil-rich city.

Kirkuk has been a political flashpointin Iraq for decades.

At least four minority groups Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, and Turkmenlive there.

But the KRG has been arguing with Baghdads central government over control of the city. They say they earned that right after the Kurdish Peshmerga pushed Daesh out of the city in 2014.

"We think this flag should wave and stay here, we have shed our blood for Kirkuk for years. We have martyrs, we protected our city from Daesh, we resisted them," said Ahmet Sabir.

Iraqi Turkmen Front Deputy Chairman and MP for KirkukprovinceHasan Turan said, "By waving the flag of northern Iraq, Kurdish parties are trying to give Kirkuk a different identity. We can never accept this."

Human Rights Watch last year accusedthe KRG of forcing Sunni Arab families to leave the city. It is an accusation that the KRG denies.

TRT Worlds Zeina Awad explains tensions in Kirkuk.

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The politics of Kirkuk is a thorny problem for Iraq - TRT World