BAGHDAD/DUBAI, (Reuters) – The militants dismantling Iraq’s borders and threatening regional war are far from united – theirs is a marriage of convenience between ultra-hardline religious zealots and more pragmatic Sunni armed groups.
For now, they share a common enemy in Shi’ite Islamist Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom Iraq’s Sunni minority accuse of marginalising and harassing them.
But each anticipates they will square off someday over the future shape of Iraq’s Sunni territories.
The question looms over who will triumph: the al Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which aims to carve out a modern-day Caliphate, or myriad Iraqi Sunni armed factions, who fight based on a nexus of tribal, family, military and religious ties and nostalgia for the past before the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Many experts and Western officials believe ISIL, due to its internal cohesion, and access to high-powered weapons and stolen cash, will overpower its Sunni rivals.
They point to the lessons of Syria’s three-year-old civil war, where a unified ISIL leadership steam-rolled other groups and entrenched itself as the force to be reckoned with in western Syria. They warn that even the Sunni revolt against al Qaeda last decade in Iraq would not have succeeded without the decisive punch of American firepower.
Cracks are already showing in the loose alliance of ISIL and fellow Sunni forces, suggesting the natural frictions that exist between the jihadists and other factions will inevitably grow.
In the Iraqi town of Hawija, ISIL and members of the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, which includes former Iraqi army officers and is rooted in Iraq’s ousted Baath party, fought turf battles from Friday to Sunday when ISIL demanded their rival pledge loyalty to them, according to locals. At least 15 people died before the clashes ended in stalemate.
FRICTION MAY GROW
Such confrontations could become the new Sunni reality if there is no swift political resolution to the crisis that began two weeks ago when ISIL stormed Mosul, seizing it in hours and then dashed across northern Iraq grabbing large swathes of land.
The charge, which saw the army abandon positions en masse, has defined the dynamics between ISIL and the other insurgents.
According to a high-level Iraqi security official, who specialises in Sunni militant groups, ISIL has about 2,300 fighters, including foreigners, who have led the speedy assault from Mosul through other northern towns, including Hawija, west of oil-rich Kirkuk; Baiji, home of Iraq’s biggest refinery; and Saddam Hussein’s birthplace Tikrit.
The high-level official told Reuters that as ISIL has raced on from Mosul, the north’s biggest city which they dominate, other Iraqi Sunni groups have seized much of the newly-gained rural territory because ISIL is short on manpower.
The different groups appear to be following ISIL’s lead in the bigger communities it has captured like Tikrit and Baiji.
But as the new order settles in Iraq’s Sunni north, the high-level security officer predicted: “They will soon be fighting each other.”
Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security expert with good contacts in Gulf Arab governments, also expects friction to grow.
“How long can this honeymoon last?” he said. “ISIL is not acceptable among the people, either socially or politically.”
