Author: M Barbu

It appears that calm has returned to Iraq after the reported intervention of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s chief and widely respected Shia cleric. In recent weeks, violence had occurred in and near parliament, which has been unable to implement last October’s election results. The clashes involved demonstrators and armed forces loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the leading candidate in the elections, and militias loyal to a loose array of rival Shia political parties calling themselves the Coordination Framework.

Overview of the crisis

Iraq is facing one of its worst political crises in years. Normally formed via elite political consensus, more than 11 months after Iraq’s October 2021 parliamentary elections, the government has yet to be formed, the longest such impasse since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion reset the political order. Despite calls for dialogue, neither side seems willing to make mutually acceptable concessions. On Aug. 29 bloody street battles erupted in Baghdad and then in southern Iraq, leaving more than 30 dead and many more injured. Violence has stopped, for now, but the political crisis is far from over, even if superficial solutions may be found in the interim. Iraqis anxiously await the end of the Arba’een holiday on Sept. 17 to see what will happen next.

On Aug. 22, the northeastern Syrian city of al-Hasakah was inundated with leaflets condemning creeping Iranian influence in the area. The printed messages were plastered around several highly sensitive locations in the city center, including the local branch of the Ba’ath Party, the neighborhoods of al-Matar and al-Mahatah, as well as near the Great Mosque and market streets. Known colloquially as the “security square,” this area is under the control of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), other regime security branches, including the Military Intelligence Directorate, as well as the National Defense Forces (NDF), a pro-government militia. Each of these groups has come under Iranian influence since the start of the Syrian war and today provides shelter for Iranian militias in the city and throughout the wider province.

Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine renewed international experts’ focus on Moscow’s earlier military intervention in Syria, launched in 2015, which often became framed as a “testing ground” for the weapons and tactics it now employs against Ukrainian cities. Certainly, direct military action of the type seen on the Ukrainian battlefield — bombing campaigns, assaults on urban areas, drone surveillance, and artillery support — had also played a key role in stunting and eventually rolling back rebel gains in Syria. But crucially, the Russian forces backing Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime also understood the importance of state-building efforts: chiefly, rebuilding the broken Syrian security forces into more coherent, effective fighting units.

One thing is for sure. Abbas will not tell his audience at the UN that members of his ruling Fatah faction are running wild in the West Bank, where they are carrying out terrorist attacks against Palestinian activists and Palestinian journalists as well as Israelis on an almost daily basis.