The Future of Iraq after Islamic State

After three months of intense fighting, the Iraqi army and its allies have successfully retaken the crucial city of Mosul from Islamic State (IS); currently a pause is in effect before they will cross the Tigris and try to subdue the eastern part of the city. Jonathan Spyer, having recently visited Mosul, does not doubt that they will win, but sees little hope of peace or national reconciliation:

It is an under-reported fact that the [Iranian-backed militias known as] “popular mobilization units” (PMU) are in the city, though not in the form of the well-known Iran-associated militias such as Kataib Hizballah and the Badr Organization. The PMU includes fighters from small Shiite communities in the Nineveh area [to which Mosul belongs], including members of the Turkmen and Shabak ethnic groups. . . . The PMU also includes a 40,000-strong Sunni component, consisting mainly of members of Sunni tribes who cooperate closely with the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government. I witnessed the presence of these fighters in the central part of Mosul.

These forces are under the overall command of the PMU, which is led in the field by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a well-known Shiite Islamist figure close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. In the assessment of one Iraqi official I spoke to, the PMU is “all over” the offensive against IS in the Nineveh province.

Beyond the specific question of the PMU, representatives of . . . the [Iraqi] armed forces indignantly deny that their forces are operating on anything resembling a sectarian agenda inside Mosul. . . . Observation inside Mosul, however, reveals the frequent presence of Shiite sectarian symbols on vehicles of all units, including the Special Forces. Most ubiquitous among these are banners bearing the supposed visage of Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of Muhammad and a figure of veneration for Shiites. . . .

It is important to understand that future developments—most importantly the defeat of IS, when it comes, as it will—are not likely to end the process of conflict in Iraq, but rather to usher in the next round. The underlying, stark dynamic of Iraq is one of fragmentation and sectarian politics. The effort to build a non-sectarian military presence in the form of the [elite] Iraqi Special Operations Forces has been partially successful, but it has not changed the bigger picture, and likely cannot.

Read more at American Interest

More about: Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Politics & Current Affairs, Shiites

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society