The so-called counter-offensive against Ramadi by the Iraqi Armed Forces proposes a scenario already seen in Iraq. ISIS or not ISIS, that an Iraqi province has been out of the control of central power, since the fall of Saddam onwards, does not seem new. After all, without the grip of the regime that held it together for 25 years, the country would have divided according to its three souls: the Sunnis in the center, the Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the north.
In December of the 85, in the most difficult moment of the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranians in full counter-offensive in Iraqi territory enjoyed the support of the Shiites of the South. On the outskirts of Basra and on the Shatt el Arab, Iraqi TV showed trenches and bodies of Iranian pasdaran dead in piles in assaults on enduro bikes against Iraqi T 55. When the counteroffensive came to a complete halt, the world took a breath and watched. As Saddam settled the accounts with the Shiites during and after the war, it comes by itself. They were kisses and hugs ...
In the same years, Iran had abstained from large-scale attacks in northern Iraq, despite the area smelling of rebellion in Baghdad. The entry into Iraqi Kurdistan would presumably have also generated the uprising of Iranian Kurds, part of the Kurdish nation straddling four countries, Syria and Turkey included.
Saddam, who had a special talent for settling accounts, also devoted himself to the Kurds, despite being indirectly useful to the cause of the war against Khomeini.
With the establishment in the 91 of the two no fly zones after the First Gulf War, the effective control of Baghdad on the national territory was further limited. Especially in the north where a certain political autonomy between Mosul and Kirkuk was by now a fact, although Turkey and Syria were pressing to curb Kurdish ambitions (Damascus was beating cash for participating in the anti-Saddam coalition).
The long effects of the Second Gulf War did not bring anything new in terms of quality other than an appreciable deterioration. The laboratory virus called ISIS has done nothing but infiltrate the power gaps and the meshes of the alternating alliances between different tribes, clans and confessions.
The same is true for Ramadi. Located on the Euphrates and on the Falluja-Abu Grahib axis (famous for phosphorus bombs and prison camps, first Iraqi then US), it has always been strategic. Only door towards Damascus and Amman across the desert, a hundred years ago it was already the scene of battles between brits and Ottomans; the outbreak just turned on is the third major clash of the last decade after those between insurgents and Americans in the post Saddam era. Its instability is endemic.
The news of the preparation of a counter-offensive by the Iraqi army makes you smile, not so much on the military level itself already comical, but on the political one.
The same was true of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown and an important crossroads between the capital and the oil north. The return to government control in the first half of 2015 was fictitious. More than a success of the Iraqi army in US franchise, it was a media showcase with much of the effort actually supported by the Southern Shiite militias, enemies of the Sunnis of ISIS and above all of the former loyalists of the regime.
The grudges between former leaders of Bath, Saddam's party-state, many of whom originating from Tikrit, and the Shiite gangs then turned the clash into a settling of scores and local feuds, proving that Iraq as a unitary state exists more. The comic side of the matter is that Saddam's city would officially be liberated from armed soldiers and dressed as those who deposed him.
Now in the Ramadi area, at the base of Taqaddum, we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of 500 American instructors. On paper they would be useful for the selection of targets in air raids. However, it is important not to call them fighters.
Now it is a consolidated trend. Instructors and advisers who work alongside the premises in an escalation without a future. It is very reminiscent of the Vietnam of '62, when the fear of admitting that there was a war made it worse. The aggravating factor of today is that there were no precedents in Indochina. In Iraq, on the other hand, the war has already happened and it has been a catastrophe.
Ramadi or not Ramadi, ISIS not ISIS, Iraq is lost. Precisely and paradoxically since the day Saddam fell.
(photo: US DoD)
