Help, or else

Things are not going well for Iraqi President Nouri al Maliki, whose calls for foreign assistance have grown increasingly frantic. While Iraqi Kurds agitate for an independent state, the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) consolidates power in northern and western Iraq. At the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Iraqi Ambassador to the United States Lukman Faily Tuesday tried to make a case for increased military assistance to Iraq. His argument came down to this: if you don’t help us, someone else will.

The Obama Administration is understandably reluctant to send weapons into what has become an increasingly sectarian conflict. However, the ambassador said that his country needs American assistance “to turn the tide against ISIS.” Until more robust US aid materializes, Iraq cannot decline offers of assistance from other countries, including Iran, Syria, and Russia. Iraq will not get involved in the Syrian conflict, but he said that Maliki “welcomes” Assad’s help. He added that Iran and Iraq have a shared history, and Iran considers many of Iraq’s Shi’a shrines as within their sphere of influence. “Their expertise is welcome.” The two will continue to cooperate as long they face a shared enemy.

He claimed that ISIS has been cleared in Tikrit, contradicting a number of media reports. The area remains heavily booby-trapped, however, and Iraq’s security forces cannot win with ground troops alone. Echoing Maliki’s earlier statements, Faily said that air supremacy is key to defeating these insurgents. A political solution must arrived in tandem with military force.

Faily, who is Kurdish, said that the Iraqi constitution was written to ensure Kurds are adequately represented, and 95% of Iraqi Kurds agreed to these provisions. While acknowledging Kurdish president Massoud Barzani’s aspirations for an independent state, he said that Kurds are still expected to play a role in shaping Iraq’s future. He left open the question of whether Kurds deserved their own independent state. Still, as long as ISIS controls the border between Iraq and the Kurdish region, it will be difficult for the two sides to cooperate against ISIS. His government welcomes Kurdish cooperation, but an independent Kurdish state is not feasible in the current political situation.

I asked the Ambassador if he would be willing to involve ex-Ba’athists, including those who have colluded with ISIS, in any future reconciliation process. He answered that no members of ISIS could be included, but that he welcomes any homegrown elements of the insurgency, as long as they have “not been involved in bloodshed.”

Time Magazine’s Michael Crowley asked the ambassador about an attack on the al Askari, or Golden Dome, mosque, one of the holiest shrines in Shi’a Islam. Al Qaeda destroyed the mosque in 2006, sparking a civil war that claimed thousands of lives. Faily admitted that the outer perimeter of the mosque had been hit, and several people were killed, but would not say if the shrine itself had been damaged. He added that ISIS had been evicted from Samarra, calling the attack a “hit and run” operation.

Faily also acknowledged that dozens of Sunni prisoners had been executed while in custody of Iraqi forces and Shi’a militias, and said the government “was looking into it.”

300,000 people were displaced when ISIS came into Mosul, and 120,000 in Tal Afar. These displaced people also threaten Iraq’s stability, and his government needs material support from the US to deal with them. Last week, he told US Secretary of State John Kerry, “We need your help now. Do not put conditions” on assistance to Iraq, because the threat is to immediate. He called this an “acid test” for the US-Iraq relationship.

Both the US and Iraq are “forever tied together because of the lives we lost and the treasure we spent in the past decade in the fight against terrorism.” ISIS is not only a threat to all Iraqis, but regionally and indeed internationally. If they are allowed to consolidate the gains they have made, ISIS will have a safe haven from which to launch attacks on American interests. And if America does not help, Russia, Syria, and Iran are more than happy to step in.