كلمة الدكتور موفق الربيعي في مؤتمر اسطنبول حول الغاز والنفط والبنيه التحتية “de- grade and ultimately destroy” ISIS !!!!!!!! If that is the aim tell me how are going to get there? 1. Reality number one ISIS is not only a security chaellnge but economic, political, strategic communications, governance and huge ideological challenge. 2. Therefore defeating ISIS must be far more than military or tactical struggle. It is through Shaping and Implementing an Effective United Comprehensive International, Regional and National Strategy. US is leading and coordinating the effort of the international alliance. Iraq should lead and coordinate a fusion effort of the regional partners. And each and every country in the region should lead its own national effort. 3. Security challenges a. ISIS covers a territory in which you can travel from Mosul to Al Anbar then to Traibeel which is the port of entry between Iraq and Jordan and also you can travel from Allipo districts to Riqqa in Syria then to Mosul in Iraq. 7-10 millions people live in its territory. b. ISIS has increased its economic and military capacity several folds after the collapse of three provinces in Iraq in June 2014. c. What happened in June exposed the major ills of the ISF which suffers from, corruption, nepotism, lack of desciplin, lack of doctrine and the political influence within the ISF. Restructuring and rebuilding the ISF will need time, money and outside help… Can Iraq build the needed level of effective ground forces in the required time? Probably 50% of the ISF can be retained and re equiped in 6 weeks to 6 months. The rest would need much longer time. d. The other security challenge is the coordination between ISF, the volunteers, the Pesh Merga and the would be newly formed Sahwa because of the issue of the trust. If you add the international alliance airstrikes to this formula it will become even more complicated. e. The other issue is : who do we work with and who we don’t work with. PKK and Al Nusra are good examples in Syria and the Military Council of Revolutionaries is another example in Iraq. f. What is the nature of the fight? Is it CT (intelligence lead war with good CTF) or or is it CI (clear, hold and rebuild) or organised army fighting another army in a traditional sense of the word….it is all of the above… g. In Syria & Iraq is it one war and one battle field or is it two different wars? Do not get fooled by those who do not know the region or have political or sectarian motivations. It is one war, it is one enemy , therefore we have to get all partners together including the bad guys to fight this evil IS. 4. International Alliance A it is clear example of the incompetence of the intelligence agencies which could not predict or stop what happened in June 2014. B it took the US administration nearly three months from June to september to react by airstrike. C. The level of the air strike and the effect is very limited. D We are concerned that we will have another unfinished job in hand at the end of this administration . To ensure the durability of the commitment of the international assisstance we probably should work toward getting the NATO in the lead. E Boots on the ground or no boots on the ground. Neither Iraq believe that it needs it nor USG asked for it, therefore it is redundant question. 5. Turkish challenge a. Unless and until the Turkish government synchronise its effort with the rest of the world vis a vis Syria it would be extremely difficult to see the end of this war. Probably a U turn would be difficult but some sort of revised priorities would be helpful. b. Also some national reoncilliation measures towards the Kurds will win the PKK to the right side of the fight. 6. Iranian Challenge. a. to the crdit of Iran, it responded very quickly when Baghdad was threatened by sending litteraly next day, planners, trainners, arms and ammunitions both to Baghdad and Erbil. Also they released 8 of our Sekhoi arisrikers which they have confiscated in 1990. And they are releasing more. They sent them back and they were operational within a couple of weeks. Off course all this would come with cost but we were prepared to pay the cost because we were facing existentional threat. b. we believe Iran should be an integral part of the international and regional alliance in defeating ISIS. The USG should not yeild to the pressure of the GCC to exclude Iran from the alliance. And the sooner we get some progress in the nuclear negotiation the better. 7. Syrian messy challenge: a. Turkey, GCC and to a lesser extent USG are working against the Syrian regime. This very regime is fighting ISIS. If the US and its allies do not synchronise this mess this will continue not the Obbama three years but probably between 5-10 more. 8. Saudi Arabia and the other GCC need to work really hard on the issue of money laundering, young men movement, intelligence sharing with the Iraqi government and also stop the sectarian polirization in the media. 9. The ideological challenge. This is by far the most difficult and complicated issue and Saudi Arabia should take the lead in the counternarrative. They should look seriously in radically changing the religious curriculum of all mosques, madrasa, islamic centres, societies and publications and start promoting a narrative to counter balance the jihadi and takfeeri ideology. Admittedly this will need several years and probably billions of dollars to reverse the effect of the billions of dollars which were spent in the last deades. 10. On the top of all these challenges there is acute humanitarian crisis of about two millions internally displaced persons inside Iraq. Despite all the challenges mentioned I am sure that we will win this war and ultimately we will prevail as united federal democratic prosperous and stable Iraq. Those challenges apply mainly to the western provinces in Iraq while Baghdad is relatively secure and the southern provinces enjoy reasonable security and I hope I will be given an opportunity to address the good security in Basra during the Q+As
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 16:16:06 +0000
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