Center for a New American Security

The following is a guest post by Sam Parker, an Iraq program officer at USIP. Sam is super smart on Iraqi politics, and his post offers an intriguing take on the recent clashes in Diyala.

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This is my best effort to explain what’s behind the latest clashes in Diyala. It is incomplete and only as good as the sources it’s based on (all media). I present it as a plausible explanation, but I really mean it when I say that it could be quite wrong. With those caveats in place:

Both the crackdown on the Awakenings and Diyala and the arrest of Hussein Zubaydi are, at least in part, the culmination of a conflict between the Diyala police and the Awakenings in Diyala that has been building over the course of the last year. In late 2007/early 2008, ISCI-affiliated Diyala police chief Ghanem al-Qurayshi fired up to 4,000 police officers in Diyala who had ties to the Awakenings (and who complained of torture while under custody) and replaced them with ISCI loyalists. In response, the Awakenings threatened to turn back to AQI and reportedly began assassinating police officers. All this resulted in public demonstrations and clashes in February 2008. This entire episode was well documented in the media.

Qurayshi is allegedly a former member of Saddam’s elite Quds Firqa who is currently loyal to/on the payroll of ISCI. Some claim he should have been de-Ba’thifed but has been given a pass because of his connections to ISCI. He was reportedly forcibly installed as the police chief by Minister of Interior Jawad al-Bolani in January 2007, over much protest by the Diyala Provincial Council (DPC), which never voted to confirm him. The DPC’s recent attempt to dislodge him was what led to, or at least contributed to, this recent flare-up. Qurayshi has been accused of ordering all sorts of kidnapping and raiding operations and other nefarious activities. These sources from oppositionist websites go into detail about him, but should be taken with a grain of salt.

Qurayshi’s main rival in Diyala is Hussein al-Zubaydi, the head of the security committee on the DPC, and member of the IIP, and the target of the recent raid. Earlier this year, Zubaydi accused Qurayshi of trying to assassinate him. As the Awakenings in Diyala have faced intense persecution from Qurayshi and the police, they have turned to Zubaydi for support. Unlike in Baghdad and especially Anbar, the IIP appears to be on fairly good terms with the Awakenings in Diyala. Although the exact nature and extent of Zubaydi’s involvement with them is unclear, his connection to the Awakenings is almost certainly the reason for his recent arrest.

Confusing matters is the dominance of ISCI/Da’wa in the DPC, where they hold 20 out of 41 seats. The governor of Diyala, Ra’d al-Tamimi, is also a member of ISCI. Even though he and Qurayshi both belong to ISCI, there appears to be wide divergence in their political agendas. Most importantly, Governor Tamimi voted, along with the rest of the DPC, to unseat Qurayshi and quite vocally condemned Zubaydi’s arrest. Tamimi has supported the efforts of the Awakenings in Diyala while, as described above, Qurayshi has led the crackdown against them.

If Qurayshi is so tightly connected to ISCI, why did the ISCI/Da’wa-dominated DPC and Tamimi vote to fire him and, indeed, never vote to confirm him in the first place? I don’t know. My best guess is that all politics is indeed local and that the standard political categories don’t apply here. Perhaps Qurayshi’s offenses were bad enough that they trumped whatever institutional allegiance the ISCI members on the DPC had for him. Maybe ISCI-affiliated provincial council members don’t take marching orders from Hakim, which would further explain the need for ISCI/Da’wa at the national level to keep Qurayshi in Diyala to keep an eye on things and fight the Awakenings. I’ve certainly met a couple of nahiya- and qada-level politicians that had sort of “chosen” ISCI as a horse to ride, but, for them, this affiliation did not translate into a strong institutional connection with the party.

If you go through and read the articles and statements on this local Diyala newspaper and the DPC official website, you don’t get the impression that there is a great deal of conflict between ISCI, the IIP and the hybrid Kurd/Turk/Arab list that make up the DPC’s three factions. The lines of conflict in Diyala, apart from the big struggle against AQI, mainly appear to be mostly local vs. central, not ethno-sectarian in nature, or even the expression of national political rivalries on the local level. Now that AQI has been mostly driven from the province due in large part to the efforts of the Awakenings, the central government is trying to marginalize them and exert control themselves. These latest activities are only the latest and most dramatic of the year-long effort to do so.

So that’s my best effort at seeing through the fog of war. Hopefully you have readers on the ground in Diyala that can clue us in.

*A final footnote. One unexplored element not mentioned in the media but that could be at play is the role of the Kurds. The Kurds have a surprisingly small representation on the DPC—they’re part of a hybrid list with Arabs and Turkman that has only seven seats. The Kurds’ base of support is in Khanaqin in northern Diyala, one of the so-called “disputed” territories in Article 140. Khanaqin is south of the Green Line but was occupied by peshmerga in March 2003, and has since been effectively part of the KRG. Perhaps this is why the Kurds aren’t as actively engaged in the DPC—because they don’t want to give it credence as a governing body that has any jurisdiction in Khanaqin. In any event, as press reports last week indicated, it was only after getting permission from Arbil that the peshmerga gave way to Iraqi forces as part of the recent crackdown, a clear sign of stepped-up hostility from the Kurds after the PEL-Kirkuk catastrophe. This could be an element in the mix of the recent flare-up, I don’t know.

Sam Parker, USIP

McClatchy has news of a chaotic raid in Diyala by a "special unit" of Iraqi forces (which, if the account is correct, sounds like Iraqi Special Operations Forces/ISOF -- the LA Times describes them as "counter-terrorism" forces). The raid hit the provincial government compound, killing the governor's secretary. Hussein al Zubaidi, a provincial council member and head of the provincial security committee, was arrested and the Iraqi forces involved in the raid seized computers and cars. Oh yeah, the raid also triggered a two-hour gun battle with Iraqi police.

Elsewhere, a raid arrested the president of Diyala University. All the detained men were Sunnis, triggering an angry statement by the IIP. Diyala's Governor, Raad Rashid al-Tamimi, is Shia, but Sunni politicians were quick to portray both the raid on his office and the arrest of the university president as part of a crackdown against Sunnis. This follows on the heels of recent reports, noted by Dr. iRack yesterday, that Iraqi forces have gone after Sunni Sons of Iraq groups in Diyala during ongoing operations (more here).

Although Maliki's office denies that he ordered the raids, if the units involved were ISOF forces, this denial rings hollow, since these units now report directly to the prime minister.

Were Americans involved in the raids? The Diyala Operations Center says yes, and if the units involved were ISOF, it would also be very unusual for U.S. SOF not to accompany them. The U.S. military command claims they were not involved. According to McClatchy:

American officials disputed this account. Maj. John Hall and Navy Lt. Patrick Evans, both U.S. military spokesmen, issued identical statements saying the operation was conducted "without the knowledge or assistance of coalition forces."

But, if American SOF were involved, it would not be the first time that they did a raid in somebody else's AOR without the full knowledge of conventional units operating in that area.

The fog of war is pretty thick here, but let's just say that none of this bodes well for Sunni-Shia relations . . . or U.S.-Sunni relations if our SOF were involved.

Update: The NYT reports that the gun battle with police lasted 30 minutes (not 2 hours), and that U.S. military helicopters were overhead. But the U.S. military is still saying they had no knowledge of the raid ahead of time. Maliki is scrambling to do some damage-control, calling for an investigation.