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Ba’athists are running the ISIS show

For two weeks, stories of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) spectacular takeover of large swaths of territory in Iraq have captivated the world. In a matter of days, we are told, a few hundred members of an irregular militia managed to subdue an entire army and millions of Iraqi civilians.  At a Freedom House discussion on Thursday, however, Iraqi pollster Munqith al Dagher offered an alternative narrative. The uprising, he suggested, is led by former Ba’athists, while ISIS fighters only play a supporting role.

Al Dagher, who is of mixed Sunni-Shia heritage, has conducted hundreds of thousands of interviews in Iraq since 2003.  Thursday’s discussion was based on results a survey of 200 households in Mosul, carried out between June 19 and 21. The interviews,  conducted by telephone and in person, included those who had connections to ISIS fighters.

Today, ISIS is said to control almost half of Iraq, including the entire Anbar province, and territory stretching from Nineveh to Diyala.   Nonetheless, Al Dagher said, the evidence suggests that ISIS controls at most 20% of the allegedly captured territory. Their strength has been vastly exaggerated by a central government that wants to characterize its opponents as terrorists and rally international help. Bashar al Assad used the same strategy at the outset of Syria’s civil war, painting every rebel group with the same “terrorist” brush. Like Assad, Nouri al Maliki wants to portray his regime as a bulwark against religious extremism.

In fact, ex-Ba’athists are running the show. These men smoke, and some of them drink. They sit in cafes until late at night, allowing women to amble about unaccompanied. While parts of Mosul are under the sway of other factions (including Islamist groups like Ansar al Sunna, tribal rebels, and ISIS), the city is primarily under Ba’athist control. ISIS benefits from the perception that they singlehandedly defeated the entire Iraqi army. Disaffected Sunnis are joining in droves because ISIS has been cast as the victor. People like to play for the winning team.

According to the survey, 81% of the Sunnis polled support separating religion from the state, up from 60% in 2004. Sunnis were also the most likely to identify themselves as Iraqi, and not by sect. Two-thirds of all respondents cited religious extremism as a very significant problem, and both sects were equally concerned about proliferation of terrorist groups inside Iraq.

In fact, only 2% of Sunnis claimed to support ISIS, while 55% said they support the Iraqi security forces (support among Shia was at 96%). This begs the question: if a majority of Sunnis oppose terrorism and Islamic law, and almost none profess to support ISIS, then how were a handful of these fighters able to take half the country in a matter of days?

Going forward, Al Dagher said, a return to the status quo ante is untenable. The current crop of politicians, on both sides of the sectarian divide, has lost all legitimacy, and the US Administration should seek out new faces to engage with. Obama should also recognize that a failure to act at all would lead to disastrous consequences, allowing ISIS to consolidate and increase the momentum they’ve gained in the last few weeks.

While 77% of Sunnis believe Maliki should step down, he is not seen as the main driver of sectarianism in Iraq. Most believe that discrimination is embedded in the system, which was shaped by Coalition Provisional Authority’s de-Ba’athification policies in 2003. Nonetheless, most of the respondents said that only the US could play the role of “honest broker” in any future reconciliation process.

That said, US air strikes would only fuel ISIS’s propaganda machine, and boost recruitment. The only viable option, then, is to empower moderates on both sides. In 2007, General Petraeus recognized that the way to defeat al Qaeda was by cooperating with tribal leaders. The Obama administration should replicate this model, although it can only be sustained if moderate Shiites are also included.

It is difficult to know precisely what is going on in Iraq amidst the rising levels of sectarianism and enveloping chaos. Due to the survey’s relatively small size, the results should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, the conclusions are clear: Iraq’s Sunnis need a reason to fight ISIS, which is fighting the central government many Sunnis see their enemy. The answer is not to send Americans to fight on their behalf, but to enable the Sunnis to fight ISIS themselves. Iraqis will rise up to defeat ISIS when they believe their interests are served by ISIS’s defeat.