Which story line sounds the more credible – that linking the rebel movement ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) to policies pursued by Iran or that linking the Sunni extremist force to Iran’s adversary Saudi Arabia?

In June this year, fighters belonging to ISIS – a rebel movement that had previously established its foothold in the oil-rich areas of north-eastern Syria – succeeded in capturing Mosul, a city surrounded by oil fields in northern Iraq. Ever since, commentators in the world’s media have been speculating on the origins of the dreaded organisation’s military success.

It is admitted that the occupation of Mosul and vast tracts of the Sunni-dominated portion of Iraq would not have been possible except for the fact that ISIS forged a broad grassroots’ alliance expressing deep discontent by Iraq’s minority Sunnis with the policies of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s government. Nor would Mosul have fallen but for the dramatic desertion by top-officers of Iraq’s state army.

Peter Custers

Yet various observers have meanwhile focused on the political economy behind the advance of ISIS. Some experts from U.S. think tanks have discussed the likely sources of ISIS’ finance, pinpointing private donors in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Other writers instead have connected ISIS’ reliance on black market sales of oil in Kurdish territory with Iranian exports of crude, described as “illegal”.

I propose putting the spotlight on the methods of war financing used by ISIS, but first it is necessary to highlight the movement’s complete sectarianism.

Soon after the occupation of Mosul, rebels blew up and bulldozed shrines and mosques in the city belonging to Shia Muslims. Pictures on the demolition of these buildings were circulated widely by the world’s mainstream media. Unfortunately, few Western journalists cared to draw attention to the role which destruction of shrines has played in the history of Islam.

Contrary to Catholicism, the veneration of saints at Sufi and Shia tombs and shrines basically reflects heterodox tendencies within the Islamic faith. On the other hand, Sunni orthodoxy and especially its Saudi variety, Wahhabism, either condemns intercession or, at the least, considers the worshipping of saints at tombs to be unacceptable. Islam’s minority of Shias, and its mystical current of Sufism, freely engage in such worship – and this throughout the Muslim world.“ISIS is … a ‘religiously inspired’ Sunni extremist organisation with an utterly secular objective: to control the bulk of oil resources in two Middle Eastern states in order to re-establish acaliphat, an all-Islamic state-entity guided by a central religious authority”

ISIS’ work of demolition in Iraq can in no way be equated with practices of Iran’s Shia rulers. Instead, they express the extremist movement’s affinity with policies long championed by Saudi Arabia. Ever since the founding of the Saudi state, numerous Shia and Sufi shrines have been rased to the ground at the behest of this country’s Wahhabi dynasty.

What does the political economy behind ISIS’ military advance in Syria and Iraq tell us about the organisation’s affinities? First, in one sense, the ISIS strategy might be interpreted as rather novel.

Whereas the extraction of raw materials is a war strategy pursued by numerous rebel movements in the global South – see, for example, UNITA’s extraction of diamonds in the context of Angola’s civil war, and the trade in coltan by rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo – rarely has a Southern rebel movement succeeded in turning crude oil into its chief source of revenue.

Indeed, whereas ISIS originally relied on private funders in Saudi Arabia to build up a force of trained fighters, the organisation has consciously targeted regions in Syria and Iraq harbouring major oil fields and (in the case of Iraq) oil refineries. By laying siege to the oil refinery at Baiji, responsible for processing one-third of oil consumed in Iraq, ISIS hoped to undermine the state’s control of oil resources.

Further, some 450 million dollars was stolen by ISIS fighters from a subsidiary of Iraq’s central bank after the occupation of Mosul. This reportedly was all income from oil extraction. Some observers put the cash income which ISIS derives from smuggled oil at one million dollars a day!

ISIS is thus a ‘religiously inspired’ Sunni extremist organisation with an utterly secular objective: to control the bulk of oil resources in two Middle Eastern states in order to re-establish acaliphat, an all-Islamic state-entity guided by a central religious authority.

Yet though ISIS’ methodology of reliance on oil for financing of its war campaigns is novel for a rebel movement, such use of oil is not unique in the context of the Middle East. Ever since the 1970s, most oil-rich countries of the region have squandered a major part of their income from the exports of crude by (indirectly) exchanging their main natural resource against means of destruction – weapon systems bought on the international market.

And while Iran under the Shah was equally enticed into opting for this form of trade in the 1970s, – it is the Wahhabi kingdom of Saudi Arabia which all the way through from the oil crisis of 1973 onwards and up to today has functioned as the central axe of such a trade mechanism.

Witness, for instance, the 1980s oil-for-arms (!) ‘barter deal’ between the Saudi kingdom and the United Kingdom, the so-called ‘Al Yamamah’ deal, and the 60 billion dollar, largest-ever international arms’ agreement between Saudi Arabia and the United States clinched in 2010.

Forward to 2014, and an Iraq desperately struggling to survive. A section of the world’s media has already announced its impending demise, predicting a split of the country into three portions – Sunni, Kurdish and Shia. On the other hand, some commentators have advised that the United States should now change gear and line up with Iran, in order to help the Iraqi government overcome its domestic political crisis.

Yet the United States and its European allies for long, too long, have bent over to service the Wahhabi state. Even as Western politicians loudly proclaimed their allegiance to democracy and secularism, they failed to oppose or counter Saudi Arabia’s oppression of, and utter discrimination against, Shia citizens.

For over 40 years they opted to close their eyes and supply Saudi Arabia with massive quantities of fighter planes, missiles and other weaponry, in exchange for the country’s crude. Playing the role of a wise elderly senior brother, the United States has recently advised Iraq’s prime minister al-Maliki, known for his sectarian approach, that he should be more ‘inclusive’, meaning sensitive towards Iraq’s minority Sunni population.

But has the United States’ prime Middle Eastern ally Saudi Arabia ever been chastised over its systematic discrimination of Shias? Has it ever been put to task for its cruel oppression of heterodox Muslims? And has the United States ever pondered the implications of the trading mechanism of disparate exchange it sponsored – for the future of democracy, food sovereignty and people’s welfare in the Middle East?

*  Peter Custers, an academic researcher on Islam and religious tolerance  with field work in South Asia, is also a theoretician on the arms’ trade and extraction of raw materials in the context of conflicts in the global South. He is the author of ‘Questioning Globalized Militarism’. 

U.S. soldiers in Basra, Iraq. Credit: PEOSoldier/CC-BY-2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 21 2014 (IPS)

Despite their ubiquity on television talk shows and newspaper op-ed pages, neo-conservatives and other hawks who propelled the U.S. into war in Iraq 11 years ago are falling short in their efforts to persuade the public and Congress that Washington needs to return.

Indeed, in contrast to the uncritical position taken by virtually all of the country’s media in the run-up to the 2003 invasion, a number of mainstream outlets are openly questioning the advice now being dispensed by the hawks about what to do about the dramatic advances by radical Sunni Islamists across northern and central Iraq over the last ten days.

The most stunning example – if, for no other reason that it took place on the hawks’ favourite news channel – came this week when Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly introduced former Vice President Dick Cheney as “the man who helped lead us into Iraq in the first place.”

“It’s a lonely job being an interventionist these days.” -- Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank
“You said (former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” she said. “You said we would be greeted as liberators. You said the (Sunni) insurgency was in the last throes, back in 2005. And you said after our intervention that extremists would have to ‘rethink their strategy of jihad.’ Now, with almost one trillion dollars spend there, with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say, ‘You were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many’?”

“Well,” Cheney, who had just co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed with his daughter, Liz Cheney, in which they had used the same phrase to describe President Barack Obama’s policy, replied. “I just fundamentally disagree, Reagan – uh, Megyn.”

Similarly, the normally staid and respectful New York Times published what could only be described as a mocking profile of Bush’s former U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, for his tirades against Obama’s policies. The article referred to the “homecoming week for the Bush administration” featuring a “cavalcade of neoconservatives newly emerged on cable television and in hawkish policy seminars to say ‘We told you so’ on Iraq.”

And when Republican Sen. John McCain, perhaps the strongest voice in Congress for intervention in Syria, called on the Senate floor for “immediate action” against the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to prevent their further advance toward Baghdad, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank asked simply, “When John McCain makes a case for war, does anyone hear him?”

Indeed, the scepticism that has greeted the Iraq war hawks over the past week has been so strong that Michael Rubin, a colleague of Bolton’s at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) – the neo-conservative think tank that played a leading role in both planning and cheerleading the 2003 invasion — felt compelled to complain about “Media McCarthyites” who are allegedly stifling legitimate policy debate.

But, as Milbank pointed out, “It’s a lonely job being an interventionist these days.” Polls over the past several years have consistently shown a public that is more than war-weary. Disillusionment has grown not only with Washington’s military interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but also with the effectiveness of U.S. military power in general.

A poll conducted by Ipsos/Reuters last week found that 55 percent of respondents opposed U.S. military intervention of any kind, while only 20 percent supported it, and that there was little difference between self-identified Republicans and Democrats.

Those trends have clearly damaged the political standing and credibility of the hawks, especially those – such as Cheney, Bolton, former Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol – who played such prominent roles in promoting the Iraq war and are now calling for renewed intervention, at least in the form of air strikes, if not re-introducing U.S. combat forces.

Their diminished influence was made clear already nine months ago when they failed to rally lawmakers – even most Republicans – behind air strikes against military and other government targets in Syria after Obama accused Damascus of carrying out a chemical-weapons attack that killed hundreds of civilians.

The hawks now face a similar problem on Iraq. Thus far, even the Republican leadership in Congress appears satisfied with the steps announced by Obama Thursday – enhanced aerial surveillance by U.S. drones and aircraft and the dispatch of up to 300 military advisers to help reverse ISIL’s advance, possibly in preparation for air strikes against targets deemed threatening to U.S. national-security interests.

Washington is also pressing Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, whom virtually all observers here blame for systematically alienating Iraq’s Sunni population, to renounce a third term or agree to share power in a way that can swing major sectors in the Sunni opposition to the government’s side.

While most Iraq specialists here have insisted that air strikes or any additional U.S. military commitment be conditioned on Maliki’s agreement to these terms, as well as a major diplomatic effort designed to enlist the help of Iraq’s neighbours – most importantly Iran and Saudi Arabia – in stabilising the country, the hawks have argued that Washington lacks the military leverage (meaning tens of thousands of U.S. troops) to bring about such a solution.

For this, they blame Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops in 2011 after the Iraqi parliament declined to act on a deeply unpopular Status of Forces agreement (SOFA) that would have provided legal immunity to any remaining U.S. forces.

Indeed, consistent with their more general efforts at depicting Obama’s foreign policy as one of weakness and retreat, the hawks have focused most of their commentary on the withdrawal decision as the cause of the current crisis – as opposed to their own responsibility for the 2003 invasion and its consequences, including the destruction of the Iraqi state and the rise of sectarianism – than on what the U.S. should do now in the face of ISIL’s offensive.

Israel-centred neo-conservatives are especially worried about the administration’s interest in engaging Iran on Iraq, a development that began last week with a high-level – albeit brief – meeting alongside ongoing international talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

When a prominent Republican hawk, Sen. Lindsey Graham, endorsed the notion that Tehran, which, like Washington, has supported the Maliki government, could play a key role in dealing with ISIL – thus giving the administration political cover for pursuing the option – neo-conservatives objected vehemently.

“The idea that the United States, a nation bent on defending democracy and safeguarding stability, shares a common interest with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a revolutionary theocracy that is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world, is as fanciful a notion that Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler could work together for the good of Europe,” wrote neo-conservatives Michael Doran, a top Bush Middle East aide, and Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the Washington Post.

That theme was picked up by the Cheneys who wrote that “only a fool” would engage Iran on Iraq, ignoring the “reality” – as former Secretary of State James Baker (and Dick Cheney’s colleague in the Bush I administration) – put it, “that Iran is already the most influential external player in Iraq and so any effort without Iranian participation will likely fail.”

Of course, one of the many unintended consequences of the 2003 invasion and the Shi’a ascendancy during the U.S. occupation was to move Iraq much closer to Iran.

(END)

Residents queue at a checkpoint in downtown Baghdad. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 2 2013 (IPS)

Ten and a half years after invading U.S. troops ousted President Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, Iraq re-emerged here this week, if only briefly, as a major foreign policy agenda item.

The occasion was the visit of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki whose main purpose was to secure greater U.S. military and security assistance just two years after the last U.S. troops and advisers left Iraq due to his government’s refusal to grant them immunity from Iraqi law.Official Washington appears genuinely concerned about the resurrection of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

With sectarian violence now claiming over 1,000 lives a month – and approaching the levels that prevailed in 2007-08 when the country tottered on the edge of all-out civil war – Maliki called in particular for the delivery of powerful weapons systems, notably helicopter gunships, to fight an increasingly lethal Al-Qaeda-linked insurgency that has been re-energised in important part by the raging civil war in Syria next door.

Members of his delegation hinted that Baghdad might also welcome the return of some U.S. military personnel as advisers, as well as drones to patrol Iraqi skies, although they were careful not to press the issue publicly, apparently for fear of a political backlash back home six months before the next scheduled elections in which Maliki is expected to run for a third term.

“We were partners and we shed blood together while fighting terrorists,” he told his audience Thursday at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) in reference to nine-year-old U.S.-led effort to curb mainly Sunni resistance to Washington’s occupation and Shia-led governments.

“We will defeat the terrorists by our local efforts and our partnership with the United States,” he added, calling for “a global war against terror.”

While the administration of President Barack Obama, with whom Maliki held a low-key White House meeting Friday, dropped such rhetoric long ago, senior officials said they were receptive to his requests.

“The Iraqis have asked for weapons systems from us. …[W]e support those requests, and we’re working with the Congress through those as appropriate,” said a senior official after a key meeting between Maliki and Vice President Joe Biden, who has effectively headed the administration’s Iraq portfolio since 2009 when Washington began its withdrawal from the country.

But the officials stressed that the Iraqi president’s own sectarian leanings and authoritarian leadership style also bore major responsibility for the growing threat posed by radical Sunni Islamists, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which has steadily consolidated its position in eastern Syria along the Iraqi border.

Indeed, the major message conveyed to the Iraqi leader here by the both the administration and Congress, key members of which Maliki also met this week, is that military power and counter-terrorist measures, even with enhanced U.S. cooperation, will not by themselves be sufficient to defeat the challenges facing Baghdad.

“…[I]f Prime Minister Maliki continues to marginalize the Kurds, alienate many Shia, and treat large numbers of Sunnis as terrorists, no amount of security assistance will be able to bring stability and security to Iraq,” argued a letter to Obama signed by a bipartisan group of six of the Senate’s most influential members as Maliki arrived here.

It accused Maliki of “too often pursuing a sectarian and authoritarian agenda. …It is essential that you urge Prime Minister Maliki to adopt a strategy to address Iraq’s serious problems of governance,” they wrote.

And while lawmakers, even after meeting with Maliki Thursday, continued to suggest that they would condition increased military assistance and sales on Maliki’s pursuit of a more conciliatory policy toward Sunnis and Kurds, official Washington appears genuinely concerned about the resurrection of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and the downward spiral of violence in Iraq and its broader implications.

Indeed, “Countering Al-Qaida Affiliated Groups” comprised the central section of a three-page “Joint Statement” approved by Obama and Maliki at their White House meeting Friday.

“Both sides emphasized – on an urgent basis – the need for additional equipment for Iraqi forces to conduct ongoing operations in remote areas where terrorist camps are located,” it said in an apparent referring to the Apache helicopters and other aircraft which Baghdad hopes to deploy in the predominantly Sunni Al-Anbar province which runs along much of Iraq’s border with Syria.

The same section praised Maliki’s public strategy to reach out to disaffected Sunnis to isolate ISIS and related groups, notably by renewing efforts to enlist and empower local tribal militias, such as the so-called “Sons of Iraq,” that fought with U.S. forces during their much-celebrated “surge” of troops in 2007-08.

Whether Maliki, who halted payments to those militias as U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, will now follow through remains a point of major uncertainty that was not dispelled in his meeting with senior senators on the Foreign Relations Committee Thursday.

The committee chair, Robert Menendez, said he was “extremely disappointed” by Maliki’s presentation about Iraq’s internal challenges and it made him “even more concerned” about providing Baghdad with attack helicopters for fear they could be used indiscriminately against suspected Sunni targets and thus drive more of the Sunni population into ISIS’ arms.

For their part, administration officials suggested that enhanced intelligence cooperation between the U.S. and Iraq could ease such concerns and stressed that ISIS had introduced heavy machine guns that had already brought down a number of Baghdad’s existing helicopter fleet.

They also insisted that Maliki had taken some important steps toward reconciliation recently, such as meeting the newly elected governor of Anbar and easing tensions between the central government and Kurdistan.

“I emphasised …that we were encouraged by the work that Prime Minister Maliki has done in the past to ensure that all people inside of Iraq – Sunni, Shia and Kurd – fell that they have a voice in their government,” Obama said in a brief joint appearance after their meeting. He added that next year’s election will be an “important expression” of that aspiration.

In any event, what with the sectarian civil war next door in Syria, the importance of reversing the current trajectory of sectarian violence and reducing ISIS’ presence in Iraq is widely recognised.

“If left unchecked, we could find ourselves in a regional sectarian struggle that could last a decade,” Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), told the Wall Street Journal during Maliki’s visit.

Of particular concern is the possible re-activation – possibly with Maliki’s blessing — of Shia militias to counter ISIS and similar groups. Such a development, according to Austin, would not only move the country closer to civil war, but also strengthen Iran’s already-significant influence in Iraq.

Indeed, Tehran’s influence in Iraq is already a source of major discontent with Maliki here, particularly in Congress where the Israel lobby, which tends to see Iran as its strategic enemy in the region, exerts its greatest influence.

In their letter, the six senators urged Obama “to make clear to …Maliki that the extent of Iran’s malign influence in the Iraqi government is a serious problem in our bilateral relationship, especially for the Congress.” ‘

They pointed in particular to reports that Tehran uses Iraqi airspace to transport military supplies to Syria and Iraqi forces as proxies to carry out attacks against camps of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iraq-based Iranian rebel group that is supposed to be under Baghdad’s protection.

U.S. officials said Baghdad has shown increasing vigilance regarding Iran’s air transport traffic. Washington is also selling F-16 warplanes and plans to sell a major air-defence system to Baghdad.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Protesters have been gathering in Ahrar Square, in the Iraqi city of Mosul, since December 2012. Credit: Beriwan Welat/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
MOSUL, Iraq, Apr 4 2013 (IPS)

Armoured vehicles and thousands of soldiers masked in black balaclavas guard the entrance to the city of Mosul, 350 kilometres northwest of Baghdad. Arriving here gives one the unmistakable feeling of entering a territory that is still under occupation – only this time, the Iraqi Federal soldiers, not the U.S. military, play the role of the occupying army, locals tell IPS.

Once a key trading post on the fabled Silk Road, Iraq’s second largest city was known for centuries for its high quality marble, and for having revolutionised 18^th century Parisian fashion through the supply of its most emblematic product: muslin.

But the beginning of the 21^st century brought dramatic changes to this city on the banks of the Tigris River. Trapped in the deadly crossfire between foreign Islamists, local insurgents and Western occupiers for a decade, the capital of the Nineveh region is now the scene of some of the largest anti-government demonstrations Iraq has seen since 2003.

Since last December, speeches and prayers have been strung between large communal meals and public tea rituals in Ahrar Square, in downtown Mosul. The same picture is also recurrent in Anbar and Salahadin, regions of Iraq where Sunni Arabs are in the majority, and where protests reach their peak every Friday.

“The federal police seal the bridges over the Tigris and thoroughly check those individuals that make it in to the square,” Ghanem Alabed, coordinator of the protests in Mosul, told IPS.

“They confiscate tents, blankets, mats … We have to pray on the (hard) ground because even our small prayer rugs are taken away. They try their best to (uproot) the camp but we still manage to sleep in the square every night.”

Being one of the most visible faces of the protests, Alabed has received both threats and bribes from Baghdad. He says he’s not the only one.

“Can you see those men on the roof of that house?” he asks, pointing towards a nearby building. “Those are cops and they spend the day taking pictures of the protesters to identify them afterwards.”

But preventing the outpouring of popular discontent through intimidation is practically impossible, as protesters — children and old men, the unemployed and the salaried, senior politicians and tribal leaders — gather in the tens of thousands every Friday.

The protestors say their grievances are many, but most revolve around the ethnic marginalisation of the majority Sunni population by predominantly Shia political leaders.

“Iran is ruling Iraq today,” Sheikh Safed Maula, a clan leader clad in a black cloak and red turban, told IPS. “Baghdad is in the hands of the Safavids (a name that designates the Persian Shia Muslims), whereas Sunnis walk to prison in line,” he said, referring to the mass detention of Sunnis on what rights groups say are flimsy charges.

Atheel al Nujaifi, governor of the Nineveh province and leading member of Iraqiya, the major opposition bloc in the Iraqi Parliament, is a regular face among the crowds in Ahrar Square.

“Other than the most basic demands like water, electricity and jobs, all these people are here to denounce the abuses they are constantly suffering at the hands of Baghdad,” the political leader tells IPS.

Though Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has attempted to remove him on several occasions, al Nujaifi continues to espouse his views.

“The government in Baghdad must fall,” he claims. “There’s no other chance for the whole country.”

Peaceful protests – for now

“We want electricity”, “Put Maliki in prison”, “Iran out of Iraq” – such are the shouted slogans that ring out over the columns of protestors sporting Iraqi flags.

Similar demands can be read on huge banners hanging from a building still under construction next to the square.

In this heavily militarised zone, the press are also under attack.

Reporters at the daily newspaper ‘Iraqion’ said they faced constant harassment while doing their job in Ahrar Square.

“The police often seize our cameras and pester us,” a journalist who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons told IPS, stressing that this is “one of the most dangerous cities for journalists in the world”.

According to local sources 43 journalists have been killed in Mosul since the invasion in 2003.

The scale of the protests in Mosul, as well as in Fallujah and Ramadi – 60 and 110 kilometres west of Baghdad respectively – is such that al-Maliki has denounced them as the work of “foreign agents”.

Anti-government protests gained momentum in mid-December, when several bodyguards of Finance Minister Rafie al-Issawi, the highest-ranking Sunni Arab in the cabinet, were arrested.

From that point on, tensions have been on the rise. On Jan. 25, Iraqi soldiers opened fire on demonstrators in Fallujah, killing nine people. On Mar. 8, the federal police shot one demonstrator in Mosul and wounded several others.

Ghanim al Sabawi, a local doctor, was one of the many witnesses to the incident.

“We had to treat the wounded in the square because the police prevented ambulances from evacuating the injured,” recalls this activist-cum-medical professional, who has spent almost every single night in the square since the protests began in late 2012.

Protest spokesman Salem al Jubury brands such incidents a “clear (attempt) by the security forces to criminalise the protests and arrest our people”.

On Mar. 20, the government in Baghdad decided to postpone the provincial elections scheduled for April in Anbar and Nineveh. Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Iraq, Martin Kobler, denounced the move, adding, “There is no democracy without elections.”

“The government has lost popularity and intimidation remains its only answer to our plight. Our protests started last December with very humble demands but those are becoming (increasingly) political over time,” al Jubury told IPS.

Experts point out that the demonstrations have been gaining momentum alongside the war in neighbouring Syria, an explosive combination that many fear could put the country on the brink of a civil conflict, a scenario that the Mosul protests’ spokesman does not dismiss.

“We will keep our peaceful struggle in the square until the collapse of the regime in Baghdad,” al Jubury said. “If there are no changes, all options will remain open in the short term.”

(END)