By Raed al-Hamed 

The protest movement in Iraq that began in December 2012 has not occurred in isolation from events in Syria over the past two years. Since the U.S. troop withdrawal at the end of 2011, Iraq has not seen organized activity by armed opposition groups, though the Islamic State of Iraq and some smaller groups have continued to carry out major attacks in Baghdad and other provinces. Most prominently, suicide bombers stormed the provincial council building in Tikrit on March 29, 2011, and the Justice Ministry in Baghdad on March 14 of this year, leaving over 20 employees dead. That is in addition to its having carried out a number of other sporadic bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country. As the Syrian revolution evolved into an armed struggle, the strongholds of the Islamic State of Iraq in Nineveh and Anbar provinces along Iraq’s western border with Syria have also seen a flow of the group’s fighters into Syria’s eastern provinces – particularly Deir al-Zor – where they have spread out into the Syrian heartland, providing the Syrian rebels with expertise in guerrilla warfare that they previously had lacked. Unable to make use of the official border crossings, the fighters usually cross illegally along the over 600-kilometer stretch between Mosul in northwestern Iraq and Anbar in western Iraq.

 

The Syrian border had been a passageway for Islamist fighters headed into Iraq throughout the years of the American occupation, as well as a crossing point for smugglers of weapons, goods and livestock across the border in both directions. As acknowledged by more than one American official, including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, the border has also become an area of transit for Iranian weapons and for pro-Bashar Assad militia members.

 

The power struggle in Syria has taken on a sectarian nature, seen in the growing divide between those supporting the Assad regime on the one side and the various revolutionary factions on the other. Sectarian rhetoric has intensified, notably in the public squares where protests are being staged in Anbar and other Sunni-majority provinces in Iraq, along with a more visible presence of Free Syrian Army flags and banners. This has provoked the wrath of the Iraqi government. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warned on Feb. 27 of this year that “a Syrian opposition victory would lead to the breakout of a civil war in Lebanon and divisions in Jordan, as well as a sectarian war in Iraq.”

 

The governments in both Baghdad and Damascus are keenly aware of the geographic distribution of the fighters in the Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. These fighters’ movements across the border, however, are outside of both governments’ control – especially in the rugged border strip south of Mosul and north of the border town of Al-Qaim on the Euphrates, as well as in the border region between the Al-Walid crossing near Rutba (300 kilometers west of Ramadi) stretching 140 kilometers north to the area around the phosphate mines. Last March 4, over 40 Syrian and 10 Iraqi soldiers were killed in an ambush carried out by the Islamic State in Iraq near Rutba, at a time when the Syrian soldiers were traveling to the Al-Walid crossing to return into Syria, escorted by Iraqi soldiers.

 

The Iraqi army has been trying to enhance its combat capabilities in Anbar, moving in early July 2012 to support its positions along the Syrian border. They have cracked down on the cooperation between the Iraqi tribes and the Islamic State of Iraq with the armed Syrian opposition, while simultaneously seeking to facilitate the flow of aid to the Assad regime. Subsequently, in early March 2013, the Iraqi army formed the Jazeera and Badiya Operation Command, for the same purpose.

 

The Iraqi army is still working on this objective, recently deploying four new combat regiments (a total of roughly 4,000 soldiers) to the Syrian border in Nineveh and Anbar provinces.

 

In an effort to prevent the attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq, on May 23-24 of this year, the Iraqi government launched a sweeping land and air military operation against the organization’s positions in the desert region between Mosul and Rawa district (90 kilometers east of Al-Qaim), and also between the cities of Ramadi and Rutba. This initial action was followed by similar operations. The Iraqi government announced that a number of Islamic State of Iraq fighters had been killed and others arrested, and that a training camp had been captured. The jihadist websites affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq, meanwhile, claimed that government forces had suffered heavy losses, including damage to a helicopter and to several armored vehicles, in addition to the dead and wounded Iraqis confirmed by the Ramadi hospital.

 

As extremists grow in strength on both sides of the border, the relationship between the Islamic State of Iraq, which is active in western and northwestern Iraq, and the Nusra Front, which controls broad swathes of Syrian territory, is deeply troubling for the United States, Iraq, the Gulf states, Jordan and other countries. There are fears that the two militant organizations will be able to link up their areas of influence and create a cross-border zone, despite the disagreements which have sprung up between the two groups in recent weeks.

 

The Nusra Front enjoys support from a number of the armed Syrian factions and Syrian society. This support prompted the Obama administration to place the Nusra Front on its list of foreign terrorist organizations on Dec. 5, 2012. This provoked demonstrations on Dec. 14, 2012, labeled the Friday of “No to American Intervention ... We Are All Nusra Front,” and with chants including “the Nusra Front represents us” and “we are all the Nusra Front.”

 

The Nusra Front, which was officially founded on Jan. 24, 2012, includes fighters primarily from Iraq, Tunisia, Libya and Saudi Arabia, as well as dozens of other Arabs, Muslims and Europeans, who outnumber its locally recruited fighters.

 

The Nusra Front affirmed in one of its statements that “fighting against the Shiite Iraqi government in Baghdad is a jihad and a sacred religious duty in order to liberate it from the Magi [a derogatory term for Iranians and Shiites].”

 

Last April 9, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and added that Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, the leader of the Nusra Front, was actually “one of the Islamic State of Iraq’s soldiers, whom we assigned for action in Syria.”

 

Only two days later, the Nusra Front implicitly rejected this claim by announcing its loyalty to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the global Al-Qaeda, who intervened to break up the dispute between Abu Mohammad and Abu Bakr.

 

However, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi rejected Zawahiri’s proposal, made in a message that was televised by Al-Jazeera, that the merger be aborted and that he “continue to work in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq while the Nusra Front would be considered an independent branch of Al-Qaeda, following the General Command.”

 

In the message, Zawahiri called for an end to “the debate over this disagreement,” since it could portend infighting between some of the most powerful and effective armed groups that are fighting against the Assad regime.

 

Sunnis in Iraq view the weapons captured by the Free Syrian Army and other rebel factions, especially the Nusra Front, in the border areas as a strategic reserve for them and safe from confiscation by Iraqi troops.

 

However, if the Assad regime falls, or the situation in Iraq spirals out of control, the arms stored in Syria would rapidly pour across the border into Iraq. Likewise, seasoned Iraqi fighters would return from Syria, having acquired new experience in fighting local armies in urban warfare. Those fighters would battle the Iraqi government to curb Iranian influence in Iraq and the region in general, possibly supported by powers that share this goal, including the United States, Turkey and the Gulf states.

 

Veterans of the Free Syrian Army and other Syrian and foreign fighters could also pour into Iraq, accompanied by a huge flow in arms.

 

This is a possibility that is recognized by both Islamist and non-Islamist leaders within the Syrian opposition.