The Rise of Islamic State Read Online Free PDF Page B

their own weapons and buy their own ammunition. The only large-scale counterattack launched by the regular army and the newly raised Shia militia was a disastrous foray into Tikrit on July 15 that was ambushed and defeated with heavy losses. There is no sign that the dysfunctional nature of the Iraqi army has changed. “They were using just one helicopter in support of the troops in Tikrit,” the former minister said, “so I wonder what on earth happened to the 140 helicopters the Iraqi state has bought in recent years?” The answer probably was that the money for the missing 139 helicopters had simply been stolen.
    In the face of these disasters the Shia majority took comfort from two beliefs that, if true, would mean the present situation was not as dangerous as it looked. They argued that Iraq’s Sunnis had risen in revolt, and ISIS fighters were only the shock troops or vanguard of an uprising provoked by the anti-Sunni policies and actionsof Maliki. Once he was replaced—as seemed inevitable given the pressure from Iran, America, and the Shia clerical hierarchy—Baghdad would offer the Sunnis a new power-sharing agreement with regional autonomy similar to that enjoyed by the Kurds. Then the Sunni tribes, former military officers, and Baathists who had allowed ISIS to take the lead in the Sunni revolt would turn on their ferocious allies. Despite the many signs to the contrary, Shia at all levels were putting faith in this comforting myth that ISIS was weak and could be easily discarded by Sunni moderates once they had achieved their goals. One Shia said to me: “I wonder if ISIS really exists.”
    Unfortunately, ISIS not only exists but is an efficient and ruthless organization that has no intention of waiting for its Sunni allies to betray it. In Mosul it demanded that all opposition fighters swear allegiance to the caliphate or give up their weapons. In late June and early July the militants detained former officers from Saddam Hussein’s time, including two generals. Groups that had put up pictures of Saddam were told to take them down or face the consequences. “It doesn’t seem likely,” Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on jihadis, said, “that the rest of the Sunni military opposition will be able to turn against ISIS successfully. If they do, theywill have to act as quickly as possible before ISIS gets too strong.” He pointed out that the supposedly more moderate wing of the Sunni opposition had done nothing to stop the remnants of the ancient Christian community in Mosul from being forced to flee after ISIS told them they had to convert to Islam, pay a special tax, or be killed. Members of other sects and ethnic groups denounced as Shia or polytheists were being persecuted, imprisoned, and murdered. The moment seemed to be passing when the non-ISIS opposition could successfully mount a challenge.
    The Iraqi Shia offered another explanation for the way their army disintegrated: it was stabbed in the back by the Kurds. Seeking to shift the blame from himself, Maliki claimed that Erbil, the Kurdish capital, “is a headquarters for ISIS, Baathists, al-Qaeda and terrorists.” Many Shia believed this: it made them feel that their security forces (nominally 350,000 soldiers and 650,000 police) failed because they were betrayed, not because they would not fight. One Iraqi told me he was at an iftar meal during Ramadan “with a hundred Shia professional people, mostly doctors and engineers, and they all took the stab-in-the-back theory for granted as an explanation for what went wrong.” The confrontation with the Kurds was important because itmade it impossible to create a united front against ISIS: it showed how, even when faced by a common enemy, the Shia and Kurdish leaders could not cooperate. The Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, had taken advantage of the Iraqi army’s flight to seize all the territories, including the city of Kirkuk, which have been in dispute between Kurds and Arabs since 2003. He