The suicide attack in Baghdad reveals security flaws

by **claud39** Fri Jan 22, 2021 6:43 pm

[size=30]The suicide attack in Baghdad reveals security flaws[/size]

The pandemic and political tensions have exacerbated the problems

January 23, 2021

The suicide attack in Baghdad reveals security flaws News-230121-iraq3

The suicide attack in Baghdad reveals security flaws News-230121-iraq3

Baghdad: «Middle East»

The two suicide bombings claimed by ISIS in Baghdad exposed loopholes in the Iraqi security services that are largely preoccupied with dealing with the fallout from the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic, political tensions, and the rising influence of rival armed groups.

At least 32 people were killed and more than a hundred wounded in two suicide bombings Thursday, in an attack that claimed the largest number of deaths in three years in the capital, which has witnessed a relative calm since the defeat of ISIS at the end of 2017.

Researcher Jack Watling of the Royal Institute of Services says Security and Defense »in London, told the French press that ISIS is no longer (...), but there are some very clear problems in the Iraqi security forces sector, and what has happened is the best proof of that.

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the security services were re-established from scratch, and foreign armies were trained by trainers. However, most of these trainers left suddenly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The new Corona virus spread among the Iraqi forces due to the lack of health distancing conditions during their presence in the training camps. And in March 2020, the US-led international coalition announced that it would withdraw foreign trainers. A senior US official in Baghdad stated that "the decrease in training during the past year due to Covid-19 caused a gap there," referring to the capital.

Watling believes that this also means that the Iraqi security forces have lost a large part of the support provided by the coalition in the field of surveillance, that is, a kind of "early warning system" that played a crucial role in detecting ISIS attacks before they happened.

Last year, after withdrawing its forces from eight bases in Iraq, the International Coalition announced that the Iraqi army was now able to fight ISIS remnants on its own. During the same period, and with the improvement of the security situation, the authorities raised concrete barriers and checkpoints that had existed for many years in Baghdad. It also moved important security units to pursue ISIS cells in rural areas outside the cities, and less experienced units were handed over responsibility for security in the capital.

Security analyst Alex Mello says that ISIS "seemed to be too weak to launch attacks," but that it "found a loophole it could access."

The US military official gave examples of this. In December, coalition forces had to carry out an airstrike near Mosul (north) after lax Iraqi forces on the ground allowed the extremists to return to action.

In the strike, 42 extremists were killed, which is a large number under conditions of the presence of ground forces on the scene. The US official pointed out that "senior leaders in Baghdad were very angry with the local forces, because they had to know about the extremists gathering."

But the main challenge may not just be technical. The Iraqi Security Forces are mainly composed of the army, the Federal Police, and the Popular Mobilization Forces. The Popular Mobilization Forces is a coalition of Shiite factions that merged with the security forces after 2014.
A
large number of these factions are supported by Iran, which has generated mistrust between them and the forces that were trained by the coalition.

Tensions increased between the two parties after the killing of the head of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani, and the deputy head of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Authority, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, in an air strike carried out by an American drone early last year.

"The real tension is political," Watling says. He explains that during the fight against ISIS, "there was a lot of informal information exchange between the Hashd, the coalition and others, but this no longer exists."

Working under these tensions is a major challenge for Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi. Al-Kazemi took over as prime minister after serving as head of the country's intelligence service. It relied mainly on the Counter-Terrorism Service, which was trained by US forces to pursue extremist cells, arrest corrupt officials, and limit attacks by armed groups that fire their missiles at the US embassy.

Observers believe that Al-Kazemi trusts a very limited number of security forces, which forced counter-terrorism forces to engage in unwanted confrontations against the pro-Iran factions, which sometimes ended in their retreat.

Marcin Al-Shammari, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, says that "the continuous retreat from orders and apologies to the targeted groups only weakens the counterterrorism forces, the commander in chief, and the Iraqi government."

The attack on Thursday prompted Al-Kazemi to make changes in security leaders, and to name new leaders, including the leaders of Baghdad operations, the Federal Police, and the Interior Ministry intelligence known as the "Falcons Cell." Al-Kazemi hopes that these changes will address the gaps. But observers doubt that this can be achieved, because the problem may not really be at the leadership level.
"When you deal with corrupt bureaucracy, no one is clean," Watling says.

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