Iraqi fighters join the wave of civilian refugees, highlighting the pervasive sense of hopelessness among many Iraqis

REUTERS - Some Iraqi soldiers are abandoning their posts and joining a wave of civilian migrants headed to Europe, raising new doubts about the cohesion of the country's Western-backed security forces in the fight against Islamic State militants. 

Interviews with migrants and an analysis of social media activity show scores of fighters from the national army, police and special forces as well as Shi'ite militias and Kurdish peshmerga have left in recent months or plan to go soon. 

They join more than 50,000 civilians who have left Iraq in the past three months, according to the United Nations, part of an even larger exodus from neighbouring Syria and other conflict zones across the Middle East. 

Disillusioned Iraqi fighters abandon their weapons in search of a stable life overseas. ​

Some Iraqi soldiers are abandoning their posts and joining a wave of civilian migrants headed to Europe, raising new doubts about the cohesion of the country's Western-backed security forces in the fight against Islamic State militants.

Interviews with migrants and an analysis of social media activity show scores of fighters from the national army, police and special forces as well as Shi'ite militias and Kurdish peshmerga have left in recent months or plan to go soon.

They join more than 50,000 civilians who have left Iraq in the past three months, according to the United Nations, part of an even larger exodus from neighboring Syria and other conflict zones across the Middle East.

TIKRIT HOMES DESTROYED, RESIDENTS ABDUCTED
(Washington) – Iraqi government-backed militias carried out widespread destruction of homes and shops around the city of Tikrit in March and April 2015 in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Militiamen deliberately destroyed several hundred civilian buildings with no apparent military reason after the withdrawal of the extremist armed group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, from the area.

The 60-page report, “Ruinous Aftermath: Militia Abuses Following Iraq’s Recapture of Tikrit,” uses satellite imagery to corroborate accounts of witnesses that the damage to homes and shops in Tikrit, and the towns of al-Bu ‘Ajil, al-Alam, and al-Dur covered entire neighborhoods.

​After ISIS fled, Hizbollah Battalions and League of Righteous forces, two of the largely Shia pro-government militias, abducted more than 200 Sunni residents, including children, near al-Dur, south of Tikrit. At least 160 of those abducted remain unaccounted for.

Basra is the third largest province in Iraq, and produces 90% of the income of the Baghdad government, yet it has neither regular electricity, nor clean drinking water. Its local government is dominated by religious parties and rife with corruption.

There has been sporadic local protests in Southern provinces for the last three years, continuation of the first round of mass protests in 2011 which was violently suppressed.  The local protests involves demonstrations in front of local government offices, blocking public roads, vigils at entrances to oil company and port facilities in Fao, Um Qasr and Ma’aqal. There is a long list of grievances, general and local people complain about, mixed with political tribal rivalries, with trade unions curiously not prominent.

Friday 17 July in Madeyna in Basra a demonstration against the electricity cuts in searing heat turned violent. There was shooting and a young demonstrator Muntadhar Al-Halfi was killed. This sparked more demonstrations in Basra, largest of which was on 31 July with slogans directed at corrupt officials. There are local rivalries between religious parties that play a role, but the demos was nonpartisan, non-sectarian, and in fact vilifies by the main political groups.

​This spread to other provinces through various media coordination methods.  Basra is the third largest province in Iraq, and produces 90% of the income of the Baghdad government, yet it has neither regular electricity, nor clean drinking water. Its local government is dominated by religious parties and rife with corruption.

The protracted battle against Islamic State has left Iraqi state and allies thinly stretched unable to restore stability to the nation.

The events in Iraq over the last month have shown that any success in Iraq requires both the Iraqi government and the United States to go far beyond the war against ISIS, and makes any partisan debate over who lost Iraq as damaging to U.S. national interests as any other aspect of America’s drift toward partisan extremism.

The war against ISIS is a critical U.S. national security interest. It not only threatens to create a major center of terrorism and extremism in a critical part of the Middle East, and one that could spread to threaten the flow of energy exports and the global economy, but could become a major center of international terrorism. It is important to understand, however, that ISIS is only one cause of instability in the region, and only one of the threats caused by spreading sectarian and ethnic violence.

Iraq is a key case in point. No defeat of ISIS can bring Iraq security or stability, or give it the unity and independent strength to resist pressure from Iran and threats based in Syria and Turkey. No military course of action can—by itself – create a stable regime and economy, and reduce the tension between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites, and Arabs and Kurds, to workable levels. Like Syria, Libya, and Yemen, military action must be joined to political and economic action and the creation of some form of viable governance.