Iraq: Bombs & Bullets vs. Political Process

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http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/bullets-political-process.html

Iraq: Bombs & Bullets vs. Political Process
By Juan Cole | Aug. 24, 2014

A series of bombings and shootings left some 35 dead in Iraq on Saturday, following on a massacre of 68 worshipers Friday at a Sunni Mosque in mixed Diyala Province. This violence was strategic, not random. One side effect was a severe setback in the attempt of Haydar al-Abadi, the prime minister designate, to form a government of national unit that includes Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs.

The car bombings on Saturday were less important to the political process, but were clearly part of the Second Iraq Civil War provoked by the taking of Mosul, Tikrit and other Sunni cities by the so-called “Islamic State,” an al-Qaeda offshoot, in June. In Kirkuk, which is now held by the Kurdistan Regional Government, a bomber targeted Peshmerga and police, i.e. the Kurdish security forces now fighting IS around the Mosul dam with US air support. In Baghdad, a bomber targeted a domestic intelligence unit of the Ministry of Interior. Why such a facility would not have blast walls up and restrictions on vehicular traffic baffles me and tells you that the MoI in Iraq is not very good, which is why it has lost like 40% of the country this summer.

The IS tactic of car bombings of soft targets is and for many years is intended to foment civil war, since they focus on Shiite populations. Their hope is that they can convince hot-headed Shiite tribes and militias to strike back at Sunnis, thus helping mobilize Sunnis for IS in its fight against the Shiite-dominated government. Stalinists used to call this technique “sharpening the contradictions,” i.e., if class struggle were not happening they thought that sometimes you had to help it along with sabotage.

On Friday IS hit the jackpot, when a Shiite militia machine-gunned down 68 worshipers at the Mus`ab b. Umayr mosque in Diyala Province. The IS has made inroads in mixed Diyala, a province with Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis that borders Iran, and IS has been brutal to Shiites and Kurds.