Iraqis have an advanced instinct to deal with danger, especially after a bitter experience that lasted for nearly four decades of crises and wars. Three months ago, I asked a friend in Baghdad how do you see her friends and the future? She said that the general mood among the Iraqis she knew was bleak, as they believed that the next war between the United States and Iran might happen in Iraq. "Many of my friends are so nervous about the war between Iran and the United States that they use end-of-service compensation when they leave the government to buy homes in Turkey," she added, and she was also thinking of doing the same.
Events have proven that my Iraqi friends are quite right in their bleak expectations, as the killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani by an American drone in Baghdad is considered an escalation by US President Donald Trump, which confirms that Iraq faces a violent future, and perhaps this will not lead To an all-out war, but Iraq will be the political and military field in which Iran and the United States will struggle, and the Iranians and their Iraqi allies may not carry out any reprisals at the moment against the United States, but the most important action they will do is to pressure the government The Iraqi government, parliament, and security forces in order to completely remove the United States from Iraq.
Since the ouster of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Iran has been the first in any competition over influence in Iraq, and the main reason for this is the Shiite community in Iraq, which is equivalent to two-thirds of the population, and which has wide political control, and which has allied with Iranian Shiites to obtain their support against their enemies. Ironically, Iranian influence and popularity have been severely affected by General Suleimani’s oversight of the brutal efforts of pro-Iranian security forces and militia groups to crush demonstrations in Iraqi streets, killing about 400 protesters and wounding about 15,000 others.
The escalating Iraqi public anger against Iran for its interference in Iraqi internal affairs could be equated with the blatant attack on national sovereignty carried out by the United States. It is difficult to think now about an action that considers the intervention of a foreign country greater than killing a foreign general who was explicitly and legally in Iraq, and also by the same bombing the leader of the Hezbollah Brigades militia, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a strong pro-Iranian group. The United States may consider militia leaders like him evil and terrorists, but for many Iraqi Shiites they are heroes who fought against President Saddam Hussein and fought against ISIS.
While I was talking to my pessimistic friend in Baghdad at the end of last September, in those days that turned out to be the last days that could be considered peaceful before the violence returned to Iraq, I interviewed many militia leaders from the Popular Mobilization, the popular forces that have been mobilized, It claims that the United States and Israel are stepping up attacks against them inside the country, but I see the allegation as close to paranoia.
I spoke to Abu Al-Walai, commander of the militant Sayyid Al-Shuhada Brigade, a splinter group from the Hezbollah Brigades, whose camp was destroyed as a result of an attack by a drone last August. Al-Alla’i said that about 50 tons of weapons and ammunition were detonated as a result of actions taken by Israel in coordination with the United States. When I asked him if his men could attack American forces in Iraq in the event of a war between Iran and the United States, he said, "Certainly yes." Later, I visited the group’s camp, and it is called "The Falcon", and it is located on the outskirts of Baghdad. I saw many pro-Iranian militia leaders at the same time, and I got the impression that they did not expect a war between the United States and Iran. Qais Khazali, the leader of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia militia, told me that he did not believe the war would happen "because Trump did not want it," and as proof that he indicated Trump's failure to take revenge after the fall of an American drone from Iran.
In fact, the events evolved differently than the militia leaders and I expected. After a few days of meeting them, a small demonstration occurred in central Baghdad calling for job opportunities, public services, and an end to the state of corruption in the country, and the security forces and pro-Iranian militia opened fire. The demonstrators must have killed many peaceful demonstrators. Although Qais Khazali later claimed that he and the other Hashd leaders were trying to thwart an Israeli-American plot, he did not tell me anything about it, and it is likely that General Soleimani believed that these simple demonstrations could pose a real threat, and he commanded the Hashd leaders Pro-Iran open fire on it and devise a plan to suppress the demonstrators.
All of this could have been disastrous for Iran's influence in Iraq, and Soleimani made the traditional mistake of a successful general when he imagined that suppressing this simple demonstration could suppress any indications of popular discontent, sometimes that could work but often otherwise, and it became clear that Iraq From the second category.
General Soleimani was killed in the wake of their greatest failure and miscalculation, but the method of his murder could convince many Iraqi Shiites that the threat of Iraqi independence by the United States is greater than that of Iran. The next few days will tell us whether the movement of demonstrations that bravely tolerated the violence used to suppress it could shrink as a result of the killings that occurred at Baghdad Airport.
Patrick Cockburn, British Resident Journalist, Author of "The emergence of ISIS"
Errors
War is said to be won by generals who make the least mistakes, but General Qassim Soleimani made a bad mistake during the past three months when he turned a small demonstration into a kind of popular uprising, and Trump may have made a worse mistake by killing General Soleimani, and making Iraq in which Iran has greater interests than America appears as a field where the two countries are grappling. And I can now understand that my girlfriend in Baghdad was probably right three months ago when she indicated that retirement in Turkey might be the best option.
The Iraqi public anger against Iran for its interference in Iraqi internal affairs is the equivalent of an attack on US sovereignty.
Iraqis use end-of-service benefits when they leave the government to buy homes outside their country.