In February, I heard some US officials explaining how Washington could help Iraq drive out the jihadists of ISIL. The new prime minister, Haider Al Abadi, needed to show that he was creating an Iraq for all its citizens, reversing the sectarian state he had inherited from his predecessor, Nouri Al Maliki. A rebuilt army was needed to inspire the loyalty of the people, and it should be led by honest and professional officers. Most of all, Mr Al Abadi needed time. The Americans could help with training and support, but ultimately a political transformation was needed, not mere firepower.
The fall of the city of Ramadi on Sunday has blown a hole in these hopes. Mr Al Abadi has tried, but he has not had time. The Iraqi state is still being hollowed out by politicians who represent sectarian and ethnic interests, but most of all their own personal ones.
The Iraqi security forces in Ramadi have withstood ISIL assaults for many months. The final blow was an opportunistic attack: the ISIL fighters were only a few hundred but they predicted that a wave of suicide and truck bombs could panic the defenders into fleeing. That is what happened. There are rumours of treachery among the Iraqi officers to justify this debacle. But treachery was hardly necessary when the ISIL fighters were well equipped with looted heavy weapons while the Iraqi forces could not rely on their commanders providing supplies or reinforcements.
By contrast, ISIL has shown it is capable of fighting on two fronts this week – consolidating its hold on Ramadi and taking over Palmyra in the Syrian desert.
The Iraqi army’s planned set-piece battle to liberate the northern city of Mosul, seized by ISIL almost a year ago, is now going to be further delayed, and the jihadists are now perilously close to the Shia holy city of Karbala.
As the Iraqi army remains weak, Iranian-backed Shia militias of the so-called popular mobilisation committees have emerged to take up the fight. Thousands of these militia fighters are massing on the edges of Anbar province, the Sunni tribal area east of Baghdad of which Ramadi is the capital, despite well authenticated reports of sectarian atrocities carried out in previous battles.
The only certainty is that the army is not up to the job on its own. It needs help from both Iran and US. In the battle for Tikrit in March and April, the army and the militias were stalled until the US joined in with air strikes, on the condition that the militias stayed back from the front line. The Americans have now conceded that they will provide air support to the campaign to retake Ramadi if the popular mobilisation units are involved, provided they are under Iraqi army command. This is true in a formal sense, though the role of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in mobilising them and their leaders’ loyalty to Iran tell a rather different story.
This combination of forces could be strong enough to drive ISIL out of Ramadi – the jihadists may even decide that an ordered retreat is better than trying to hold the city.
An optimist might look at the forces being lined up and see an opening for an Iraq united against ISIL. The popular mobilisation units have now integrated into their ranks many thousands of Sunnis, according to their spokesmen. Some anti-ISIL tribal leaders in Anbar province have acknowledged that the state is absent and cannot protect them and so are inviting the Shia-led militias to join the battle for Ramadi. Could Shia and Sunni fighting side by side for Ramadi forge a new Iraqi nation? In 2003, before the US invasion, no less than 30 per cent of Iraqi marriages were across the sectarian divide.
This rosy scenario is unlikely to endure beyond the immediate goal of forcing ISIL away from the gates of Baghdad. The harsh truth is that the most effective forces fighting in both Iraq and Syria are based on sect – Shia or Sunni – or ethnicity in the case of the Kurds. In this process, national identities have been splintered and will be hard to put together.
Loyalties among Sunnis in Anbar Province are divided, even among families. Some see ISIL as a mobilising force for the Sunnis in the same way that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been for the Shia. Others see ISIL as an interloper destroying traditional power structures. In the longer term it is hard to see how the Iraqi Arabs of the Euphrates valley who have resisted outside rulers from the British onwards will accept the Shia supremacy.
Mr Al Abadi is not strong enough to be the transformational leader the Americans had hoped for. With supporters of his predecessor, Mr Al Maliki, seeking to undermine him and heavily dependent on Iran, he is unlikely to end the Shia lock on the security services and prove to the disaffected Sunnis that Iraq is now a country for all its citizens.
After the battle for Ramadi is over, the leaders of the Shia militias will be seeking to have their formations incorporated into the Iraqi army, or maybe into the proposed National Guard. If the Sunni volunteers came along too, this could be the way forward to a more inclusive Iraq. But the sectarian imperative of Iraq’s current rulers will not be so easily crushed. The question remains whether Iran wants a fully functioning Iraq, or one that is weak and dependent on Iranian help.
There is no politician in Iraq with the authority to rebuild the state. With the rainbow coalition of forces lining up to fight ISIL in Ramadi – from the US to Iran – the ability to project devastating military force on the target is not in doubt. But as the Americans noted back in February, Iraq’s problem is a political one. Mobilising military force on its own will not reverse the hollowing of the state.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter: @aphilps
