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This war isn’t over yet

The big news from Iraq today is the alleged death in Tikrit of “King of Clubs” IzzatIbrahim al-Douri, who is believed to have led the Ba’athistNaqshbandi Army. He was a key figure in the alliance of the Ba’athists with the Islamic State. It’s anyone’s guess how his death will affect that alliance. It is even possible he is not yet dead. It wouldn’t be the first false report of its type.

If he is dead, it is reasonable to hope that tension will grow between two groups with different goals: the Ba’athists aim to restore dictatorship in Iraq, while the Islamic State aims to destroy Iraq and install on the territory it takes there and elsewhere an Islamic caliphate. Those goals may overlap for a time, but ultimately they are incompatible. Rumors of tension were already rife. Might al-Douri’s death aggravate the friction between the two groups?

It’s possible, but rarely has the disappearance of one leader or another in the recent Middle East wars meant a decisive turn. The Islamic State (then in Iraq) survived the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 and eventually revived. The later years of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship had already seen a good deal of Islamicization. The Islamic State long ago adopted Saddam’s “Republic of Fear” strategies: killing, often without reason, to cow the general population into submission.

It is also possible that the Ba’athists and Islamic State will recognize the threat that disunity poses, reconsolidate their alliance and reconfigure their forces to defend better the territory they still control. ISIS forces are even advancing on Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and an important outpost still under Baghdad’s control. Whether they succeed in that effort or not, the Islamic State and its Ba’athist allies are still far from defeat.

The center of gravity in this war is still the Sunni population. ISIS and Ba’athist success would not have been possible without both passive and active support from Sunnis in Ninewa, Anbar and Salahuddin provinces. Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi in Washington this week has done his best to reassure the Obama Administration that he understands that, but he also remains heavily dependent on Shia “popular mobilization” forces, who fight harder and better than the Iraqi Army and are linked to political parties that support Abadi’s coalition government. But using Shia forces in predominantly Sunni Anbar and mixed Ninewa will push Sunnis there in the direction of ISIS and the Ba’athists.

This war isn’t over yet.