In May of this year, Islamic state in Iraq and the Levant – Daash managed to extend full control of the Ramadi city , the center of Anbar province, west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. All regional and international actors involved in Iraqi affairs aware that the organization of the Islamic state may be very interested in access to the Iraqi capital Baghdad in the coming period, and may surprise all in carrying out a specific operation within its walls that makes the mission of driving it out of the Baghdad almost impossible.
Due to the acceleration of events since 30 September of last month, and correlation effects and its repercussions on the Syrian and Iraqi scenes with regard to the fight against state organization in Iraq and the Levant “Daash,” and at the same acceleration and step may be surprised the ruling the Shiite National Alliance , Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi presented a commitment to the United States not to allow Russia to implement air strikes against state organization in his country similar to air strikes of Russian fighters in Syria, as this step disappointed the Iraqi Shiite militias that rejoiced and welcomed the Russian intervention in Syria, and expected to that intervention on the Iraqi situation not only in terms of reducing the dilation of Daash or face it, but also the confrontation of the American policy in Iraq, and about the removal of the risk of its aims towards Iraq . We say here Oh, for those who are happy with Russian intervention, they first have to ask the former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who signed the arms deals with the state of the Russian Federation and until today those weapons have not sent despite the fact that the former Iraqi government paid the consequent sums of money in advance with contracts, and secondly to question the Russian government about the reasons for the delay in the execution of contracts before they rejoice !!
So one could say that the failure of militias popular crowd backed by the religious authority and Iranian government , and Iraqi forces backed by US logistically and in intelligence in the face of the organization Daash and to drive ISIL out of the province of Ramadi and other Iraqi provinces controlled by them, may cast for the benefit of the United States to reorganize the Iraqi house , who led him by the wrong policies to the sectarian and exclusionary tyranny and sectarian war which Iraq has not seen like in modern and contemporary history , and it may arise from this intervention international large understandings between the US and Russia in regard to the Arab East issues and perhaps the most important of these issues after Iraq is the Syrian crisis which broke out since mid- March of 2011, and still its bloody scene remains constant to this day, despite all the diplomatic , international, regional and Arab attempts made to find a solution to it. In this context, and in the confused regional scene , we wonder whether the United States is eligible to face the organization Daash in Iraq?
The United States of America is considered the substantive equivalent to the state organization . It has a strategy to deal with this organization, in spite of all the criticism directed by the US media and politicians of the US Congress to the administration of President Barack Obama that it does not have any plan to deal with this organization. And all indications are that it runs the helm of things from behind the screen, that the demonstrations and laws enacted in the wake of it , and perhaps the most dangerous and the most important of it is the law of parties, not to mention the political movement witnessed in the Iraqi arena, and achieve the meetings broke fashionable, all indicates that Daash and its presence will lead to a new reality in Iraq, the United States want, this time, different from what she created after the ninth of April / May 2003.
United States of America will return to Iraq, this time not as an occupation force, rejected by a large section of the Iraqi people, and resisted their presence, as happened in 2003, but as a saving Power , to save the political process from disastrous position if Daash reached to Baghdad, and also will provide an opportunity to restore what can be restored from this political process, to allow for the rehabilitation and reintegration of the names and personalities and parties, opposed to that political process.
Certainly, this can not be achieved with out price , and the first is to fight Daash , and also trim the toenails of the Iranians influence, which seems to be the price of both sides of the equation in Iraq, their sunee and Shiites are ready for it. Hence, we can say that the emergence of Daash as an armed organization pushed for a political, military and economic mobility, and will change the situation in Iraq, either Iraq regains himself, and a successful US strategy, or that the organization of the Islamic state has what it can says, and invalidates all things done by America in years ago.
So sources of the Center of links for Research and Strategic Studies indicate that the United States has already begun to take the lead in the face of the organization Daash by restoring control over the military bases in Iraq and the expulsion of militias popular crowd of them, and download all kinds of weapons , even the missiles, especially in the two bases Altaji and Ain al-Assad . And to know the importance of these bases for the United States of America to be able to control Iraq, we come to mention them in summary:
1. Ein al- Assad Airbase represents strategic and military importance that it includes the headquarter of the command of the seventh division of the Iraqi army , located in Anbar province and it was a scene of battles between government forces and the militant of the Islamic state organization . Al Asad Airbase was built in 1980 during the reign of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Iraqi Air Force has been using this base , and was the center of the three squadrons of MiG fighter jets as MiG-21 and S 25. Ein al-Assad is the largest air base in western Iraq, it represented a starting point for military and strategy operations during the US occupation of the country, which began in 2003.
During the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 , Australian commando troops captured the Al -assad air base and handed it over to the US occupation army in May of that year . US forces placed her hand on the 50 fighter aircrafts which were parked at the base as well as a large quantities of arms and . ammunition .The Iraqi army received the base from the Americans in December / December 2011, currently stationed in it the seventh division of the Iraqi army, also includes a school of infantry . In 2014, Ain al-Assad base has regained its importance and its momentum due to its embrace of American soldiers and officers and military advisers providing support to the Iraqi government forces in the war with the organization of the Islamic state.
The base is located a few kilometers to the south-west of the Baghdadi area , dominated by the organization of the State on February 12 2015. Identical information assured of the presence of hundreds of trainers of the US Marines at the base as well as experts and advisers sent by Washington to coordinate with Baghdad in the war against the state organization . Assad base also is a home of 18 of the Apache fighter jets that are involved in the bombing sites of the state organization.
2. Balad Air Base, previously “Bakr airbase and it is the biggest air base in Iraq, just 64 kilometers north of Baghdad, was established in the mid-eighties by the Yugoslavian companies, amounting to the base area of 25 square kilometers, which is surrounded by a security fence , the length of 20 km, the base is comprising of two runways for takeoff and landing, the length of the first is 3503 m and the second is 3504 m , in addition to 39 fortified shelters for aircrafts . During the period of the Iran-Iraq war, “1980 -1988 m” Balad base was a headquarter for the two squadrons of MiG -23 aircrafts.
In the course of American aggression on Iraq, the air base came under aerial bombardment intensively during 2003, and used the base by the US military forces on a large scale, where it was the center of the main transport and supply to the coalition forces in Iraq, and set up a field hospital to treat the American wounded troops . In the summer 2008 US forces have used the base a landfill place for the chemical and medical waste where destroyed 140 tons of waste per day .The base was handed over to the Iraqi side in the November 8, 2011 m. After the theoretical US withdrawal from Iraq at the end of 2011 taking in to the consideration that the Balad base received on July 13 of this year, four aircrafts type F-16, a type of aircraft that Iraq contracted to buy from the United States of America.
3. Taji base: Taji base located about 85 kilometers north of the city of Baghdad, where there is a huge airport and a military base was originally an Iraqi Republican Guard, was built during the reign of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In addition to the Habbaniyah base, located near Lake of Habbaniyah in Anbar
But international and regional policy, as always, and perseverance based on balances and on realism and on the great game and on game theory in international relations that takes place since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire on Arab land, the United States of America realizes that it is not the only actor in the Arab east , but there is another strong international actor as a Russia, it is difficult to be underestimated and its interests in the Arab East, especially in Syria. Caesarean Russia in order to reach the warm waters of “Mediterranean” and have a say in this region fought more than 13 wars with the Ottoman Empire, and it was the gateway to its defeat, the current Russian successor represented by President Vladimir Putin will not tolerate in order to maintain his country’s interests in Syria to follow escalatory steps to preserve it. On the basis of this perception, Syria is not just a transient state at the Russian political thought and This is well absorbed by the United States, so the deal may be present in one way or another to maintain US influence in Iraq and curb Iranian influence in it, and the rehabilitation and reintegration of the Sunnis actively in the political system Iraq, in contrast to maintain Russian influence in Syria.
There are strategic, political and cultural points of intersection between Moscow and Damascus, beyond the Russian military units stationed in Tartous and Latakia, and air superiority fighter of Vladimir Putin secured the support for the Syrian army. An argument in Arab analytical and political mind that Russia defends its interests and its allies in Syria, with all elements of power and influence to have, do not dig deep into the mental structure of the Russian actor, not rooting for a real explanation withdrawn on the last contexts, present and future as well.
Syrian and Iraqi model remained, in some cases, carved in the Russian political mind as a “back garden” and “representative sample” of the economic transformation without involvement in the international liberalism and in global market economy led by the United States.
As an extension of the same symmetry between the “original and the copy” and “the sample and the community mother”, Moscow is considering a Syrian future, according to the Russian perspective, not only by maintaining of their political and strategic, military and cultural interests, but also by providing “continuation of the” Russian soft power in Syria, pumping the blood-proliferation and expansion in the Russian Albaradagm in power and the opposition.
Witness here , Moscow sought to make an approach between the government and the opposition currently applied in the Kremlin which is based on five foundations: the strong presidential rule, parliament follow the directives of President with the participation of some opposition faces, week political and media opposition , infiltrated civil society or feigned, political, military and financial clique of influence at home and abroad to promote for the president and support his projects and provide strategic relations with neighboring countries first and then the region in the second .
According to this perspective, Moscow converge the political future for Syria, and according to this thinking adheres to Bashar al-Assad, so that its strategy and thinking represent a form of government system requires the presence of al-Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus, not because of electoral or political legitimacy of Assad , according to the official Syrian prospective imposed on Moscow to respect his survival in power. But as long as Moscow did not find a Syrian political figures in space, whether in government or opposition, able to embody its theory of governance, the Russian support for Assad will not be lifted and will not suspend.
Remarkably, in this context, that the “Russian Five points” mentioned above devotee in Egypt today, which received support from the Kremlin, strongly embodied in Algeria supported by Russia economically and politically , and it is on the way to be existed in Libya led by the military commander, Khalifa Haftar, and it is in the process of embodiment in Turkey which is in a fast converting from the participatory parliamentary rule, to unilateral presidential rule, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and if the sectarian division of the rule was not existed in Iraq, it would find its organizational way in Baghdad.
It is difficult for Moscow to think in Syria outside the framework of the Russian strategic mind in the government and the opposition, and so Moscow is strongly tied to the analytical and thinking of its mechanism and can not demand outside its roots for itself and all Arab region .
Based on the above, it can be said that the great powers like the United States of America and Russia dealing with Middle East issues that fall within the framework of the Supreme interests in accordance with the principles of partnership and competition at some times and controlled tension another time, because they are aware of the risk of direct confrontation, because the two countries are not willing to re-strained relations and heated, as happened with them in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, it was the international community at that time had taken its breath for fear of a nuclear war. Sharing their influence in Iraq and Syria for them much better from the ravages of a devastating collision. Iran, which has extended its influence over Iraq are in front of this sharing between the two superpowers may be in the path of the decline of its influence in Iraq, but it will not be an easy thing to Iran as it would use all its papers to keep the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and these papers are to ignite a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites, so in tune with its expansionist policies , it was not surprising that the regional allies of waging their strong anger at US policy in the east Arab .
Muammar Faisal Kholi
Rawabet Center for Research and Strategic Studies