Shiite Iraqi PM to Türkiye: Baghdad will not be a Mere Spectator as Sunni Radicals take Syria

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia’ al-Sudani called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday and read him the riot act about the lightning conquests in northern Syria of Sunni rebels.

Al-Sudani cautioned that “Iraq will not be a mere spectator to the grave repercussions of the events taking place in Syria, especially acts of ethnic cleansing of racial and religious communities there.” He emphasized that “Iraq in the past has been harmed by terrorism and by the consequences of the dominance of extremist organizations in regions of Syria, and would not permit any repetition of those episodes.” He stressed the importance of respecting the unity and sovereignty of Syria

Al-Sudani observed that “Islamic nations are not in need of internal partition, saying that “what is happening in Syria today is to the benefit of the Zionist entity [Israel], which had undertaken airstrikes on the Syrian Army in such a manner as to pave the way for the terrorist groups to establish dominion over further regions of Syria.” He denounced the Syrian Sunni rebels for having taken no position in support of “our people, the Palestinians,” and for having neglected to issue a frank denunciation of the [Israeli] aggression against Gaza.

The Iraqi PM office’s read-out ended by saying that the telephone conference was characterized by an emphasis on the importance of joint coordination between the two sides [Türkiye and Iraq], and on the necessity of supporting security and stability in Syria, since it directly affects the security and stability of Iraq and all the countries of the region [i.e. including Türkiye].

Al-Sudani’s cold fury with Erdogan comes through clearly in the read-out. It isn’t just the resentment by a Shiite leader of Erdogan’s Sunni triumphalism but also a sense that Ankara is being reckless and irresponsible in a way that could have dire consequences for Iraq.

Moreover, Al-Sudani was speaking as the prime minister of all Iraqis, and not simply as a Shiite head of state. He is getting enormous pressure from Iraq’s Kurds, who I figure are about 22% of the Iraqi population, and who see the particular rebels that took Aleppo as fundamentalist Arab radicals with a genocidal attitude toward Kurds. Northeast Syria is heavily Kurdish and Kurdish sources worry that the Kurdish population faces dire peril from the rebels.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Mohammad Shia’ al-Sudani, courtesy the Prime Minister’s office of Iraq.

Many observers in the Middle East believe that Türkiye is at least to some extent behind the rapid conquest of Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, by the Sunni Arab rebel groups, Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA). The Sunni rebel forces in northern Syria have also long been supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency, though they shunned some groups with known al-Qaeda ties, which now form part of HTS. The excellent military equipment, smart battlefield tactics, and crisp new uniforms of the rebels point to significant foreign support.

Last weekend, as Turkish-backed factions of the Syrian National Army (SNA), allied with HTS or the Levant Liberation Council, launched offensives against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) across various fronts in the broader Aleppo region, tensions escalated. Some of the cites below come from BBC Monitoring, for which, thanks.

The core of the Syrian Democratic Forces is the leftist Kurdish YPG paramilitary that was backed by the US in the fight against ISIL 2014-2018. Kurdish sources said that the SDF had established a humanitarian route to facilitate the safe evacuation of civilians to more secure zones. However, the Arab fundamentalists backed by Türkiye targeted and obstructed these evacuation efforts. So it was alleged by SDF commander Mazloum Abdi on “X”

Abdi wrote, “Events in northwestern Syria developed rapidly and suddenly, as our forces faced intense attacks from several sides. With the collapse and withdrawal of the Syrian army and its allies, we intervened to open a humanitarian corridor between our eastern regions, Aleppo and the Tal Rifaat area to protect our people [Kurds] from massacres. But attacks by armed groups supported by the Turkish occupation cut off this corridor. Our forces bravely defended our people in Aleppo, Tal Rifaat and al-Shahba. We are working to communicate with all actors in Syria to secure the protection of our people and safely evacuate them from the Tal Rifaat and al-Shahba areas towards our safe areas in the northeast of the country. While our forces continue to resist to protect our people in the Kurdish neighborhoods of Aleppo city.”

This statement was platformed by all major Kurdish media.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights alleged that some Syrian National Army fundamentalists had called for the beheading of Kurds in Aleppo. Video has also circulated of SNA fighters abusing Kurdish prisoners, according to BBC Monitoring.

To be fair, so far the fundamentalist Sunni Arab rebels do not appear to have committed atrocities of the ISIL type, and they aren’t ISIL.

The important thing is that neither the Iraqi Shiites, represented by Al-Sudani, nor the Iraqi Kurds are convinced that these fundamentalist Arab militias will treat Kurds and other minorities equitably.

Hoshyar Zebari of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in northern Iraq warned that some of the constituent groups of the HTS had been “incubators” for ISIL, though this allegation is historically not quite correct. The Jabhat al-Nusra or Succor Front derived from the Islamic State of Iraq, which had in turn derived from al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. But it split with ISI, which became ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in 2012. The Succor Front instead allied with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s al-Qaeda, which kicked ISIL out. Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the leader of the Succor Front, distanced himself from al-Qaeda in 2016, turning against terrorism abroad to focus on taking territory inside Syria. None of this history can be very reassuring to leftist or liberal democratic Kurds, but it isn’t accurate to simply declare HTS to be the same as ISIL. Some of its constituents are branches of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. It isn’t that their rule would be good for women or minorities, but Sinjar-style massacres of Kurds may also not be their goal.

There is a sense in which al-Sudani leads what might be called the Sixth Iraqi Republic. The first four governments after the 1958 overthrow of the British-installed monarchy were nationalist, and headed by Sunnis.

They were:

Baath

The Fifth Republic was installed by the Bush Administration and its longest-lived leader was Nouri al-Maliki. It fell when the so-called Islamic State group (ISIL, ISIS, Daesh) took 40% of Iraqi territory in 2014.

Subsequent Shiite prime ministers led the take-down of ISIL in alliance with Iran and the United States, rebuilding the Iraqi national army and welcoming the rise of Shiite paramilitary groups, the Popular Mobilization Forces. Together, and with the help of the US Air Force and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Sixth Republic reestablished Iraq as a unified state, even invading Kirkuk in 2017 to halt Kurdish subnationalist expansion.

What has happened in Syria could threaten the very foundations of the Iraqi Sixth Republic, which was born in the struggle against Sunni Arab radicalism. For one thing, Al-Sudani clearly fears that developments in Syria could lead some Sunni Iraqis to rebel against Baghdad. He may be completely off-base on that view, but he is not the only one in Baghdad to hold it.

So this perceived existential threat to the Sixth Republic is what led Al-Sudani to such vehement statements in his conversation with Erdogan, who won’t have agreed with any of al-Sudani’s fears. Erdogan sees the Syrian Sunni Arab rebels as political allies for Ankara and as far superior to the Baath government in Damascus.

No one hated the secular Arab nationalist Baath Party more in history than the religiously-minded Iraqi Shiites, so it is ironic indeed that they should now be standing up for Baath leader Bashar al-Assad.

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